Afterward
by wrldpossibility
Summary: For me, this fic is a virtual S6. Starts at the moment of Michael's exoneration and continues post-series. Rated T to maybe M for some sexual situations and language.
1. Chapter 1

Day 0 (Exoneration Day)

Sara had been resolute: if Michael's plan worked, if he truly was exonerated and they found themselves free from this nightmare, they weren't running. Starting fresh didn't have to mean starting over. Mike would go home to his familiar bed, to his school, his friends. The house was hers, paid for and in her name, she told Michael, a hint of pride in the jut of her chin. Her eyes had held his: the effort she'd put into making a life for their son there was hers, too, and should have been Michael's…theirs to share. He'd have that back, she said. He'd get it _all_ back; they both would.

Lincoln picked him up and drove him to Ithaca. In the dark car, it was easier to decompress. He ran down the events of the past few hours for his brother, stumbling over Whip's death, swallowing hard to choke that sorrow down. As they neared the city, he leaned his head back against the seat rest, pinching his eyes shut. He wasn't sure if he'd ever been this tired. His back stung from the blows Posei—Jacob—had delivered; he was likely bleeding through his shirt onto the tan upholstery of the rented sedan. With a grunt, he forced himself forward as they eased off the highway. Forced his thoughts to follow the curve of the road toward Sara's neighborhood.

He knew the address, of course. He'd already known the house was in Sara's name; she'd bought it after her inheritance from her father had come in. Mike had been fourteen months old. That had been a good day for Michael, following the paper trail from afar. He'd been able to breathe easier, just a bit, knowing Sara could support their son without struggle.

Lincoln slowed as they moved into residential streets, and Michael fought back the part of his brain playing the memory of Mike yelling into the phone, calling Jacob 'dad', on repeat. How much damage had that man managed to inflict in these final hours? Lincoln pulled up to the curb, and Michael stared at the house, resolutely averting his eyes from the drain he knew harbored all his messages to his wife. Downstairs, lights glowed in what had to be the entry and the kitchen. Upstairs, one window shone yellow, the rest dark. "Be real with me," Michael said. "What am I walking into? When you and Sara found him, how was he?"

Lincoln cut the engine and juggled the rental key in his hands. "He was fine, man. Not a scratch." Michael frowned at his brother, who give in with a sigh. "Jacob told him you were an imposter, that his real dad had died years ago."

Michael let out a breath through his nose. "Okay." He could deal with that.

"And…that his mother had been killed, too. Luckily we found him pretty quick after that. Set it right."

"He told Mike…Sara…was… _dead_?"

"He's fucked up, man."

Michael just stared at Lincoln, feeling his blood literally crash through his veins. Could his heart actually explode with rage? Being told the person you loved most in this world was dead…he wouldn't wish that feeling on his worst enemy. To think Jacob had told Mike, a child…Michael cried out suddenly, smashing a fist into the dashboard. "God damn him!"

Lincoln grasped his shoulder, then let go when Michael winced. "Listen. You've got to get your head on straight, alright? He's upset, but he needs you, you know? He's gonna need to see you're…I don't know, _you_."

Michael spoke through gritted teeth. "And how am I supposed to do that? He doesn't even know me."

Lincoln huffed at this. "You really think Sara would let Mike grow up not knowing you?" Michael just stared at him. "All his life, Mike has thought of you as, I don't know man, some type of mythological being. A superhero."

"You're not serious."

"The hell I'm not." Lincoln laughed, a gruff sound heavy with irony. "I actually used to feel sorry for him, can you believe that?"

"Who? Mike?"

The smile twisted on Lincoln's face, like he'd smelled something that made him nauseous. "No, man. Jacob. Always coming in second in a two-man race. And not just with Mike. With Sara, too."

Michael winced again. "I don't know if I need to hear—"

"Mike _reveres_ you, ok? That's what you need to know. He reveres you because Sara loves you, and has never let you go, and _that's_ what you're walking into."

* * *

Michael wasn't sure what he expected when they stepped through the entry, but it wasn't this: complete stillness, followed by the sound of crying—the gasping, hiccuping-type—coming from up the staircase.

"Mike," Linc said, and they took the stairs two at a time, bursting onto the upper level landing breathless. Because that was the world they lived in, Michael supposed, and probably always would. A world where the worst is always possible.

"Sara?" Lincoln called, leading the way toward Mike's room. They rushed down a hallway, framed photos lining the walls. Michael nearly tripped over a soccer ball, then a basket of laundry.

"In here," Sara called, and Michael exhaled in relief. At Mike's doorway, he paused. Sara looked up from Mike's twin bed. She'd evidently tried to rise to greet them but had only managed to get part way to her feet; Mike gripped her arm tightly.

"Hey," she said softly, smiling at the sight of them in the doorway. The dark bruise above her cheek had faded to a mustard yellow. Her eyes shone as they connected with Michael's. Mike's eyes—equally shiny, with tears—followed his mother's gaze. He didn't look frightened, exactly, but didn't release his hold on Sara, either.

"He can't sleep," Sara said quietly. She looked exhausted.

Lincoln moved into the room. "Let me," he told Sara. "Hey, Mikey. You're okay, kiddo." He sat down on the bed with them. Mike reached for him with his free hand. "I'll sit right here, and you can close your eyes. How 'bout that?"

Envy threatened to swallow Michael. Lincoln had some sort of all-access pass, while he couldn't seem to move from this doorway. Sara attempted to unwind Mike's arms from her neck. She kissed his forehead, leaning in to whisper to him. "Uncle Lincoln will be right here. Just…give Mom a minute. Just one minute. I'll be back."

"No! No…" She pulled herself from his grasp, and he rose to his knees on the bed, crying harder, reaching for her and grasping for her shirt. Sara looked at Michael desperately as Lincoln tried to draw a rigid Mike back.

Michael couldn't stand it. "Don't leave him," he heard himself say. "Stay with him."

Sara hesitated, and Mike took the opportunity to re-wrap his arms around her waist. She cast a defeated look at Michael, and he looked miserably back at her. Lincoln just looked overwhelmed. "I'll be downstairs," he said gruffly. "Washing up."

He moved past Michael in the doorway, clapping a hand to his shoulder—gently this time—as he departed. Sara resettled Mike back in bed, and lay down beside him with a sigh. He curled around her, head on her chest. His small hands gripped his blanket tightly. Star Wars, matching the pillowcase Sara's head rested on.

"Are you…mad…at me…Mom?" Each small word a gasping breath.

"No, no. No one's mad at you, baby." She ran a hand over the crown of his head, but Mike turned and looked over Sara's shoulder at Michael. He tried to make his head shake in the negative. No, he wasn't mad. How could he think that? Sara shifted on one elbow to follow Mike's gaze. "No one's mad at you," she said again, her eyes on Michael. He could guess how he looked to both of them: broken. Tortured. Uncertain. _Don't leave us,_ she mouthed.

He leaned his back to the doorframe, felt an acute pain between his shoulder blades, and sank down to the floor, settling there to wait for Mike's eyes to close, for his shuddering breaths to slow to an even rhythm. After he'd been still for a good while, Sara's arm extended and her hand reached out in invitation. Michael crossed the room quietly and sank down again with his back to the mattress, grasping her hand in both of his. He brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed them. Her thumb lightly traced his mouth, then his jaw, his ear. She massaged his neck where his collar stood stiff with sweat and probably blood and grime.

"What have I done to him?" he whispered. "Have I given him nightmares? What?"

Sara's voice floated over his head. "You gave him _me_ ," she said slowly. "All these years. That's what you did for him. For us."

After a while, her hand stilled, and when he looked up over the bed again, she was sleeping too, her other arm draped over their son. He let his head sink back against the mattress and closed his eyes for the first time in days.


	2. Chapter 2

Day 1

Sara woke early and took a long, hot shower. In her room, she made a beeline for her clothes and retreated to change in the guest bathroom, resolutely averting her eyes from anything of Jacob's: his suits still hung in his closet, midterms still sat on his bedside table, awaiting a grade. Downstairs, she made coffee, looked in the fridge for cream, then remembered she'd jotted it on her grocery list a week ago. She blinked at the absurdity of this.

She was staring at her coffee cup when Michael came up behind her. She felt his hand on her shoulder, and turned, wrapping herself around him. He embraced her tightly, holding her against every inch of him, and she squeezed back, arms around his waist, possibly as hard as she could.

"I'm sorry about last night," she said into his shoulder. "That wasn't…well, what I imagined."

He still didn't release her. She smelled the rusty tinge of blood, sharp around the edges with dried sweat. He needed a shower, and she cast around in her mind for where she'd find him clean clothes. "Is he still sleeping?" she asked.

Michael nodded into her hair. "I thought I should get out of there before he woke up and saw me." The words sounded raw to Sara, but they were true enough. She pulled back in his arms to face him.

"Give him time. We—he and I—talked for a long time before you and Linc arrived last night. He was confused, but I think if I—we—keep explaining, keep giving him the same narrative, he'll come to trust the truth." She released his hands to grip the edge of the sink tightly. "God damn him for robbing Mike of this moment, robbing both of you, from meeting each other."

Michael's mouth twitched upward slightly. "That's exactly what I said to Linc last night."

"You should know," She looked up at him. Made sure he was paying attention. "Mike worships you. Or, the idea of you, anyway." She smiled.

"Lincoln said that last night, too."

"Jacob tried to undo all that yesterday, but I don't think he can. He created a bit of a crease, but we'll iron it out." She leaned back, taking Michael's hands back in hers. She traced his knuckle with the pad of her thumb, and his fingers squeezed gently. Reaching for him, feeling him respond…it was such a familiar experience, she could cry. Still, he was so hesitant. So…measured around her, ever since she'd found him. Taking on the weight of the world? Assuming all the responsibility for their separation? The only kiss they'd shared had been outside the safe house in Greece, and Sara had initiated it, Michael only following her lead. Should she grab him, and pull his face to hers? Or should she stay still, allow him to come to her? _What do you want from me, Michael?_

She had to ask. "Are… _we_ okay, Michael?"

He didn't answer her right away. "Remember Gila?"

"Of course."

"Buttercup Road. When you stepped out of the car and I laid eyes on you, my whole body just…" He let out a whoosh of breath. "Melted in relief. Nothing mattered, right then, except that you were alive and whole and had agreed to come."

"And then?"

"And then the guilt came crashing down. The remorse. And you were so angry…"

"My father had just died, Michael."

"And I'd lied to you." He let that hang there between them, holding her gaze.

It was the same look he'd worn all the times he hadn't been sure of her back when they'd started this dance, hadn't known without a doubt which way she'd land. Not just in Gila. In the infirmary. In Evansville, Indiana. Had they backslid so far, in the past seven years? Sara sighed. "This time, the lie was for me. I know that. I can't be angry with you for it."

"Yes, you can." He glanced down, studying his hands, which he had threaded together. "And you are."

Was he trying to force her off the brink? Because she'd jump, if pushed. "Being angry with you, Michael, has actually never gotten in the way of being in love with you." His mouth twitched again, but he continued to study her until she caved. "Fine. Okay then. I'm angry you left me alone in this. I…I've mourned you, Michael. I've raised Mike alone, all this time, and it's been _hard_."

"I know." Abject misery. Self-loathing. How she hated it.

She stared him down. "And you?"

"Me, what, Sara?"

He wasn't going to let him off so easily. "Lay your cards on the table, Michael. You're angry too. You must be. I married the man who kept you from us."

He pinched his eyes shut. She knew he'd already channeled so much anger for this in Jacob's direction…with his fists, apparently. With his favor called into Fox River. He didn't know she knew about that, but she did. It made her wince, but only until she remembered how Jacob had used Mike as nothing more than bait. By design, Sara realized suddenly, Michael didn't have any anger leftover for Sara.

"He deceived you," he said now.

She laughed hollowly. "And how ironic that is."

He looked at her. "How so?"

"The only instance in which I've ever been a good judge of character is with you." She raised her eyebrows pointedly. "A con, when we met." She took a step toward Michael. "But in regard to Jacob, I want you to know—"

Michael went rigid, a hand up to ward her words off. "Sara. Stop. Why do you think I never knew you were married to him? I never looked. I never dug. Because I knew I couldn't—I can't—hear about you and…him."

Another irony: Michael, who did his homework on everyone, had resolutely avoided researching even a single aspect about Sara's marriage. Still: "I need to say this, Michael."

His jaw clenched, and he stared down at their feet. Finally he nodded.

"When I met Jacob, and then again when he proposed, I made it clear: you came first, Michael." She looked at him. "And I didn't mean chronologically. I was unequivocal: you were the love of my life, and no-one would replicate that, ever. I thought…well, I saw Jacob as a saint for it. Letting you loom between us all, larger than life. I let Mike worship the idea of you with Jacob right there, in your shadow. Who could be so understanding, I thought? Who would give himself to a woman who only offered half—no, just a splinter—in return?" She let out a hard breath. "God. His arrogance."

"He thought he could break you, in time."

She cocked her head in scorn. "I don't even think he cared. It was a game to him."

"And to you?" This was all that mattered to Michael. She could see it, plain as day, all over his face.

"He was a friend? A companion. A good conversationalist to share dinner with, at the end of the day." She shook her head. "That makes me sound shallow." She squared her shoulders. Looked at Michael from an angle. "But grief, and single motherhood, and, to be honest, sobriety…any one of those things will make you tired, Michael. Bone tired. And Jacob was so willing to help. He was a good partner. He was good to Mike. I thought, what's wrong with me, that I want to turn this down? Am I really such a masochist that I won't give Mike more than a broken mother and a ghost of a father? So I didn't. Turn it down."

"Everything you've done, you've done for family," he said slowly. "For Mike." It wasn't a question. Michael looked amazed somehow. Like she'd alighted onto something sacred to him.

She looked at him. "I've waited for you, Michael. The best I could. Isn't that what you wanted?"

He looked like he couldn't quite speak. _Then don't,_ she thought, maybe a little bit fiercely, and for once, he didn't overthink it. He lifted her chin, flicked a glance into her eyes, and saw something there that gave him permission to lower his face to hers. He kissed her like he had at Bruce's safe house when he'd thought her dead, like in the train bathroom on the way to Chicago when she'd so painfully declared her love for him. He kissed her until she wanted to crawl right up his chest, damn the blood and sweat. Until her fingers scraped down his back and he stiffened sharply before covering his pain.

She pulled back. "You're hurt?" She chastised herself for not noticing the blood soaking through his shirt, only the spattering on his collar. A spattering she knew—didn't know—was Jacob's.

"I'm fine." He was breathing hard, she'd give him that.

She touched his cheek. "Go wash up. Guest bathroom down the hall to the right." She half-smiled. "I'll bandage you up afterward."

* * *

The hot water felt heavenly. When Michael turned off the tap and opened the shower stall door to dissipate the wall of steam that had gathered in the small bathroom, he saw a neat stack of clothes on the counter by the sink. He reached for a towel before investigating: a pair of slacks, belt, white button-down shirt, clean-looking underwear. He squinted at the pile. If she thought he was going to wear…

"Michael?" Sara knocked at the door, and he wrapped the towel around his waist, but she didn't come in. "They're my friend Heather's husband's. I just ran over and begged to borrow something. They're a few doors down. Are they okay?"

He swallowed. "Thank you."

The pants were a bit big, but fit well enough with the belt. He came out of the bathroom shirtless, padding in bare feet back toward the kitchen. Along the way, he took in everything: the homey, comfortable feel of the living space, the artwork in the hall (definitely old-school Mike, at least a couple of years old), figurines and vases that may have come from the Tancredi household. Photos of Mike, one at a lake, a fishing pole in his hand (the lake house?), another in a soccer uniform. He stopped to drink these in, but didn't see any of Jacob, any of Sara _with_ Jacob. He wasn't so naive as to think they didn't exist; she'd done a quick and thorough job of whisking them away.

In the kitchen, Sara sat him down at the dining table and got to work on his back. He knew it was ugly by the way her mouth set into a firm line when she studied the damage, but she gathered gauze, antiseptic ointment, and peroxide stoically. Michael closed his eyes, resigned to the sting of the peroxide, welcoming the familiarity of Sara's hands on his skin, her breath at his ear, the tips of her hair brushing his shoulders.

"That hurts." His eyes snapped open at the sound of his son's voice. Mike stood at the bottom of the stairs in his pajamas (Captain America), wavering between the second-to-last and last step.

"Mmm," Sara said noncommittally. Michael and Mike just stared at each other.

Sara discarded one bloody gauze strip in favor of a fresh one. "Mike," she said casually, focusing the majority of her attention on Michael's flesh, "you were really tired last night, so I didn't get to introduce you to your father. Your real father, who is really alive and here to stay. You can see that his back is hurt, so no hugging, but maybe he can shake your hand." Her voice only quivered on the last word. Michael was impressed.

Mike continued to stare at Michael, who couldn't seem to stop himself from staring back. He'd seen Mike at the lake house, of course, and once again last night, but for the first time, he could really study him. See the absolute perfection of his hazel eyes, soft skin, lips, cheeks, hands, hair…Michael had never in his life understood unwavering, unconditional love as he did in this second. He forced himself to blink.

"You're really my real dad? Not pretending to be?"

"I'm really your real dad," Michael forced himself to say. His voice shook more than Sara's had. "And I am very, very glad to get to officially meet you." He held out his hand.

For an impossibly long, horrible second, Mike stood frozen. Then he moved slowly toward Michael, much as he had at the lake house. Michael forced himself to simply wait, hand extended, as though hoping for a bird to eat seed out of his hand. _I won't bite_ , he wanted to say.

"I knew so, because you were just like the pictures," Mike said, and then his hand was curling around Michael's and he had to clamp his jaw shut to avoid bawling, right then and there. Sara's hand paused on his back, then resumed cleaning one of his wounds.

"You've seen pictures?" he managed. Mike's fingers felt cool and soft and impossibly small. Michael tried to squeeze back gently, while simultaneously never letting go.

"Loads." Slipping his hand free, he pulled up a chair and scooted close, the better to see Sara's work. "Eww." He seemed to remember something, and looked sharply up at her. "You need the rubber gloves, because there's blood."

Sara nodded. "You're right, good job remembering. But just like I don't need to wear gloves when you get a cut, I don't need gloves with your father."

"Why?"

"Because I don't mind your blood. Your blood is like my blood."

Mike seemed to accept this as truth, while Michael fought back another wave of emotion.

Sara steered Mike back on track. "So at the lake house, you needed help and I couldn't help you. Who came?" She nodded toward Michael.

Mike nodded gravely back. "And I knew it was my dad, remember?" He addressed Michael, who instantly felt like an unprepared student called on in class. "You said, 'do you know who I am?' And I did."

"Yes," Michael managed.

"But then Jacob said no. He said you were some guy pretending."

Michael rallied. "But your mom would know, wouldn't she? She'd know if I was a…pretender."

Mike considered this. "Because she knew my dad. In real life."

"This _is_ real life, Mike," Sara chastised quietly. Michael thought of what she'd said earlier, and Lincoln too, about Mike mythologizing him.

"And if you weren't my real dad, she would use the rubber gloves."

Michael nodded. "And Uncle Lincoln. He would know your real dad, right?"

"Yes, because he's your…" he struggled with the connection.

"Brother. Uncle Lincoln is my brother."

Mike nodded, as though this information tracked. It fit what he already knew. And that was what it was going to take, Michael thought, to win over his son. Facts that fit, and plenty of them.

"Why doesn't it hurt?" Mike asked now.

Michael looked at him in confusion. "Peroxide in an open wound? It _does_ hurt."

"You're not crying."

Michael smiled. "You're doing a good job distracting me."

Mike seemed pleased to hear this. He leaned farther forward to study his injuries. Michael felt his eyes on his skin as tangibly as Sara's fingers. "What did you do?"

Michael's eyes flicked to Sara, but her back was turned, retrieving a final bandage from the counter top. "I uh…fell off my bike."

For a moment, Mike leveled him with a stoic stare, all Sara-seriousness. Then, like the sun breaking through cloud, his face alighted in a smile and he laughed. The sound was unexpected and beautiful and pure. "No, you didn't!"

"You're right, I didn't. You're too smart for me to fool."

The smile grew bigger, then slowly slid from Mike's face as a new thought dawned. "Jacob hurt you, didn't he? After he hurt Mom." His lip quivered on the word. Sara stilled behind Michael, a hand resting on his shoulder.

"He hurt you too," Michael said softly. "Words—and lies—can hurt the most." He swallowed. "I'm very, very sorry that happened to you, Mike."

"Is Jacob…bad?"

Sara took a sharp breath. "He did bad things. He lied to us, and broke rules, and he kept your dad from us."

Mike considered this. Michael could watch him think just by looking at his eyes narrowing, and the way his brows knit together. "Jacob was the one pretending?"

"Yes, baby," Sara answered. "That's it exactly."

* * *

At first, the park felt too open to Sara. She felt exposed, like Mike could disappear again, slipping between the trees lining the grass like a fish. She scolded herself: coming here had been her idea. Mike liked this park, and they'd all needed some time outside the house. She knew Michael felt edgy too; he sat back and watched them all, eyes on the backs of them, like they might vanish if he looked away. Inviting Sheba had been an excellent idea. The way Lincoln's eyes alighted at the sight of her made Sara smile.

After a while, Mike grew bored with grown-up conversation and dribbled his soccer ball toward the playground. Sara followed, even though technically, she could see the climbing structure from the grass. She sank down on a bench just to see Michael crossing the park to join them. He walked stiffly, still in pain, but the familiarity of his gait, the sight of him, here in her everyday life, hit her like a punch. It didn't seem like he could possibly be real, despite what she'd told Mike.

He sat next to her, and she reached for his hand. Her own looked very white against the ink, and she stared at the patterns on his skin for a moment. "Thank you," she said, "for before."

Michael looked confused.

"What you said to him, how you explained things so rationally. It was perfect, really."

Michael looked across the playground at their son, hanging from the monkey bars. "Sara, I had no idea what I was doing." He said this like it was a shameful secret.

She smiled. "And yet, you said exactly what he needed to hear."

He exhaled. "I've been less nervous answering questions from terrorists."

Sara laughed, and the sound caused Mike to pause mid-swing and look at them. He hung there for a moment, studying them together. She waved one hand to him. "Remember all those parenting books we were going to buy?" she said.

Michael smiled, but it looked like it hurt a little. "Guess you got a head start."

"Worthless," Sara admitted. "Truly, utterly worthless. The only way to learn how to do this thing is to do it."

"No manual, huh?"

"You just know what to say because it's your kid, you know? And oh Michael, he's _so_ like you. The way he thinks, processes information…thank God I had a crash course in Michael Scofield, or I would have been in real trouble."

Michael snorted. He looked at Mike, and the smile that lingered on his face made Sara's entire chest feel full and heavy and tender. "He looks like you, though. He lucked out there."

She bumped his shoulder with her own. "Sure, sure. What a tragedy that would have been, to have your face." She leaned her cheek against his shoulder, and he ran a hand over her head, fingers trailing through her hair. When he reached the tips, his eyes snagged on the sight of his tattoos, and Sara captured his hand. Turned it over in her palm. "Will you get them removed?" she asked.

He nodded.

"It will hurt more than last time. The skin across bone, less flesh and muscle."

"It hurt more getting them on, too," he agreed.

She hadn't thought of that. She sighed, biting her lip. "Maybe just leave them. I don't care, Michael."

"I do." He looked straight out, where Mike dangled again. "And he'll ask about them, sooner or later."

"I'm actually surprised he hasn't already." He slipped his hands underneath his thighs on the bench.

Conversation closed, Sara guessed. She might as well open up another, even harder one. "Will you be honest with me about something?"

He looked hurt. "Of course."

"Jacob. He'll be transferred to Fox River?" she asked quietly.

"That was the recommendation." He didn't look at her.

"And T-Bag?"

"He put in his own request. If I know him, he'll want revenge."

"Yeah." She could barely get the word out. "He's always been a fan of…poetic justice."

Michael continued to stare at the playground. "Do you want to weigh in on that? Because it's not too late. He could be sent elsewhere. Either of them could."

"Why would I?" She heard the sharpness in her voice, but couldn't curb it.

"Sara." He finally turned to look at her. "I hate that man. I do. But I know you—"

"Michael. I love you," she said fiercely. "I love _you_." She wouldn't let him question her loyalty.

"I was going to say, you are compassionate. You are a caregiver. I know you don't want to have a hand in causing pain. So for you—not for him—for you, I would change my recommendation." His eyes fell on her face. She knew the righteousness of her declaration still shone there. His mouth softened into a sad smile. "And I love you, too."

He picked up her hand and kissed her palm, and she exhaled slowly. "Ok. Thank you." She swallowed. "But I don't know what I want."

He brushed a finger to her cheek, over the fading bruise. "It's an open offer. Just say the word."

She could only trust herself to nod.


	3. Chapter 3

Day 2

Sara kept her eyes resolutely closed. If she opened them, she reasoned, she'd have to think about things like clearing out the rest of Jacob's things, and deciding when Mike should return to school, and finding a damned good therapist (or three). But if she kept her eyes closed, she could continue to feel Michael's fingers tracing circles on her back, dodging deftly between her scars, and in her mind, she could relive last night: those same fingers caressing her face, the hollow of her throat, cupping her breast, sliding down her belly. The pad of his thumb rolling over the rise of her nipple, and down her inner thigh, placing firm, slick pressure exactly— _exactly_ —where she needed it. Every time. She smiled to herself, pressing her face into her pillow. Michael Scofield was many things, but bad in bed had never been one of them.

He caught her grin. The crinkle at the edge of her eyes must have given her away. "What?"

She rose on one elbow to kiss him. "Can't I just be happy?" He returned her kiss, hooking a hand against her hip and tugging her on top of him. His jaw clinched momentarily at the pain to his shoulder, but they both managed to ignore it. "Better lock the door," she said against his mouth.

He froze. "I feel bad, hiding from him."

"Well, get over that." It had been after midnight before Sara had been able to extract herself from Mike's bed to join Michael in the guest room. She ran a hand down his torso, watching him relent as she moved south. With a groan, he rolled toward the door to click the lock.

Afterward, the house still sounded quiet. They indulged themselves, laying together longer. He toyed with her hair, fanning it out on the pillow. "Tonight, do you want to move back into your room?" he asked, his tone neutral. Too neutral.

She shook her head. She'd thought about this. "I want to stay in here. There's less closet space, but I'll just move over what I need for now. And you don't have much."

He looked contemplative, but didn't argue. "About that. Lincoln and I are going to do a little shopping before I take him to the airport. Probably around 11?"

"That's fine. Whatever you need." She thought of something. "Maybe take my credit card?"

Michael sat up and reached for his (only) shirt. "Lincoln says he's got it covered."

That seemed doubtful, but she let it go, watching him pull on his (only) pants. "The director I met with two days ago? He's put me in touch with a lawyer. Someone the government has paid an obscene amount of money to straighten everything out quickly. My name, assets…marital status." He slid her a look, half-bemused, half-pained.

Sara swallowed. "I can file for an annulment based on fraud, I think." She wasn't sure, actually, but Heather's husband had mentioned something like that. He was a circuit court judge.

Michael leaned over the bed and kissed the top of her head. "Why don't we let the lawyer sort it all out? If I have to marry you twice, that just means I'm a lucky man twice." He cupped her chin and tipped her face up to look at him. "If that's what you're feeling."

She managed to roll her eyes and blush at the same time. "You know that's what I want, too."

He looked at her shyly. "We could have a whole new wedding."

"But I liked our wedding."

He smiled. "I did, too. A big party, then. Or a trip. The three of us."

She smiled back at him. Laughed at the goofy grin on his face. "I like the sound of that."

* * *

He approached the house, two garment bags slung over one arm, a fistful of additional shopping bags in the other. At the door, he hesitated. Should he transfer the bags to one hand and turn the knob? Or continue juggling them all and lean his arm into the bell? In the end, he did both, setting the bags down in the foyer.

"In here," Sara called. She sat in the kitchen, nursing a mug of tea. From above them, Michael heard a loud clunk, followed by a door opening. He whirled toward the stairs, ears alert.

Sara laid a hand on his arm. "It's fine. It's my friend Heather. I asked for a favor." Sara grimaced. "Kind of a big one, actually."

Michael sat down next to her. "Oh?"

"She's going through the master bedroom. She's already done the office, bless her. I gave her some cardboard boxes and carte blanche."

"Oh," he said again, understanding.

"I gave Mike extra screen time," she nodded toward the living room, where Michael could see the back of their son's head, bent over some device. "And now I'm just sitting here, feeling like a coward, wishing this were a whiskey." She offered a shaky laugh.

"I'm sorry, Sara. I know you're…" He couldn't decide what, exactly, and it wasn't his place to label her feelings, but he _was_ sorry.

"Angry. I think I'm angry." She sighed, and turned the mug in her hands. "But there are worse things. For instance, in all this, I've neglected to tell you I'm very sorry about Whip." She laid a hand on his arm. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Michael let a new wave of pain wash over him. But he was thankful, too. He _did_ want to talk about him. She already knew the basics of what went down that night, but he filled in the gaps. He told her how he had put together the pieces, discovering him to be Bagwell's son, how he'd become the ace Michael so desperately needed up his sleeve. She asked thoughtful questions, skillfully pared his grief from his culpability on a few key points, and sympathized. It felt good, collaborating with Sara again, even if just in retrospect. It felt like L.A., chasing Scylla. Which hadn't been much fun, now that Michael thought about it.

He heard footfalls on the stairs, and they both turned.

"Heather," Sara said, rising to cross the room to the woman who now stood in the foyer. " _Thank_ you." They embraced, and when they separated, the woman cast a quick smile in Michael's direction. Sara waved him over. "I want you to meet my…" She slid Michael a sheepish look, then shrugged. "Husband? We don't know, exactly? Because that's the world I live in, a downright crazy one. But this is Michael. Michael, Heather."

Heather laughed, shaking Michael's hand. "It's very nice to meet you, Michael. I've heard a lot about you." To Sara she added, "More like a crazy interesting life, I'd say. You keep the block from getting too boring."

Sara turned to Michael. "Heather's just down the street. Her son and Mike are good buddies."

Heather squeezed her hand. "Boxes are sealed, stacked, and ready for Goodwill. Larry can come by for them if you want. Just give a shout." She looked carefully at Sara, and Michael could see the concern there. "I'm pretty sure I got everything of his." In college, Heather had probably been the type of friend who wouldn't leave a bar without all her girlfriends. Michael felt a rush of gratitude toward her, for being in Sara's life. "You're good?" she confirmed now. I'm around, anytime. If you want to talk."

"Thank you," Sara told her again. They walked her out, and watched her head down the street for her house. An idea came to Michael, and he held out a hand to Sara. "There's something I'd like to show you."

She accepted his hand, but looked hesitant. "Mike will wonder where I went."

"This will only take a moment." He stopped her at the end of the drive, over the drain containing the soggy pile of origami. He pointed down at their feet. She followed his gaze, and then squinted, and then fell to her knees, gasping as she peered through the slats. "Michael! Is that—?"

"I didn't want you under the impression I hadn't been thinking of you. That I'd forgotten—"

She whirled on him, kneeling on the cement. "Are these…cranes?"

He nodded, concern dawning at the wild look in her eyes.

"For me?"

He nodded again. "I made some videos too, borrowing phones when I could manage it, but you don't need those now."

"Why?" she exhaled. She still bent over the drain, like she might try to climb down right then and there to retrieve them. The single word confused him. Why did he send them? Why did he make them? Why were they in the drainage pipe?

She rocked back on her heels, lacing her fingers and palming her forehead as she did when she was very, very upset. "What do they say?" she gasped.

This hadn't been his intention, this full-scale sorrow he read on her face, in the hunch of her shoulders. "God, Sara, I'm sorry." He gripped her shoulder, trying to get her to rise to her feet. "Come here. Come here, sweetheart." Showing her the cranes had been a horrible mistake. "I only meant…meant for you to know I cared. That I loved you. I never stopped loving you."

She rose slowly, allowing him to embrace her. "How…How did I not know?"

"I…" What to say?

Her hands grasped at him, tightening around his forearms. "The thought that you needed me…that you reached out and I…didn't even _see._ " She sobbed into his shirt. "I can't stand it."

"No, no," he said, cursing himself. "I didn't need anything. I just had this…okay, yes, need…for you to know I was alive. Ever since I found out I'd been set up. I couldn't bear you thinking I'd abandoned—"

"And I never responded!" she cried.

"Sara. I know why now. I know why." He captured her arms before they could fly upward again in distress. A passing car swerved slightly when the driver caught sight of them, crying on the sidewalk, and Michael steered her back toward the house.

"Can we fish them out, somehow? All of them?" she asked.

"Um, sure. I'm sure we can."

She got quiet, and he glanced sideways at her as they stepped back into the kitchen. Mike hadn't even noticed they'd left the room. "I'm sorry," Michael said again. "This wasn't my intention, to make you feel this way." He sat heavily at the table, head in his hands.

"I know," she said softly, but she turned from him to stare out the window. In the weak reflection, he could see her wipe the tears from her eyes carefully. After a moment, she said, "Can you give me a minute?"

He tried to rearrange the rejection on his face to resemble understanding. "Of course." He got back up, and walked out the kitchen slider to the patio.

She came to find him about ten minutes later, just as he was debating returning to check on her. She looked calmer. In control. "I've made a decision," she said. "About that recommendation."

For a second, he didn't know what she was referring to. Then it hit him: Jacob. Fox River. "And?"

I think," she said, "you're right." She looked down, scuffing the toe of her shoe along the edge of a planter box. "I don't want to begin our life together with his misery hanging over me. So in the spirit of starting over with a clean slate, he should be moved to a different facility."

Michael nodded slowly. "Okay."

"But…if it doesn't get done right away, if maybe the paperwork takes a little longer and he needs to spend just a few days in Fox River, that's okay too." She looked up at him.

His eyes flicked to hers. "You surprise me."

She made eye contact, her face sober, impassive, but not quite as detached as he imagined she hoped. "Well, maybe I want a little justice too, Michael."

* * *

Mike's mazes were as complex as his treasure maps. He showed Michael the book he started with, The Book of Mazes, Volume 3 (age 12 and up), then illustrated for him how he graduated to making his own, using a ruler and copy paper. They sat on the floor in the living room, using the coffee table as a writing surface. Mike sat close, but not too close, to Michael, near enough that he could show him his work, but not so near that they touched. Not quite.

"You have to start where you want to end up," Mike explained, "and then work your way backward." He pointed to the center of his most recent creation, a maze shaped like a volcano, the ending located at the very heart of the mountain. Licks of fire and wafting steam rose in Crayola-hued wisps from the peak.

"I see," Michael said. "Otherwise, how can you know how to get there?"

Mike looked up from a second maze, this one in the belly of a dragon. "Exactly." He called to Sara, who sat dictating medical notes into her laptop. "Can we print one, Mom?"

She looked over at them. Michael knew she'd tried to give him privacy with their son, but Mike wouldn't have it; ever since Jacob's lies, he needed Sara in his sight. She worried over it, but it seemed reasonable enough to Michael. "Uh, yes. Just a second, Mike."

"She scans them on her phone so I can print them as many times as I want," Mike told Michael now. "Duplicates." He looked pleased to have conjured the word. "I don't have my own phone," he added.

"Well, no," Michael said, then stopped himself. What did _he_ know about about little kids and cell phones?

Sara handed over her phone and Mike made quick work of navigating to her scanner app, opening a file folder under his name, and sending one JPG image to the printer sitting on the now nearly empty desk in the office across from the kitchen. "This will be a hard one," he told Michael, "but not too hard for you."

Michael actually felt himself begin to sweat. It didn't help that he'd caught Sara's smirk as she returned to her screen. The maze the printer spit out featured a space ship; the lines twisted through the cylindrical hull, spitting out at the base, with sparks for exhaust. The start was located at the nose, and Michael carefully placed the tip of his pencil there.

"How 'bout I time you?" Mike said, still holding Sara's phone.

Across the room, Sara actually snorted. " _Please_ time him, honey," she said.

"Ha ha," Michael said, sobering when he noted Mike's finger hovering over the start button of the iPhone timer. He swallowed and set to work. He glided into the first pathway, scanning ahead to the first few turns. He made one misstep, backtracked, and then saw it…the route into the finish, at least 10 moves away. Panic set in. Should he stumble around, feigning confusion? Or draw his line directly there? _There's no manual,_ he reminded himself. So what felt natural to him? What, he asked himself, would _he_ have wanted _his_ father to do? Not patronize him, that was for sure.

He winked at Mike, hovering over him with the stopwatch app, and traced the path to the finish with a fingertip. He watched Mike's face, worried he'd see disappointment there, or worse, a sense of failure, but instead saw pleasure, tinged with respect.

"I knew you'd get it fast," he said, and he seemed to take personal pride in this, despite the fact that Michael had solved his puzzle. He stopped the timer. "Eight seconds. That's a record, Mom," he called. "Better than yours."

Sara's lips quirked upward, but she just pretended to swat his words away with one hand. "Surprise, surprise."

Mike refocused his attention on Michael. "Want to do another?"

Michael smiled. "Sure. But first, I want to know where you get your ideas. Do you like dragons?" he asked, pointing at Mike's drawing.

Now Mike humored _him._ "The dragon is just the…" he struggled for the right word…"the package for the maze," he explained.

Michael grinned. "Okay. But what if the maze is actually just a decoy—er, a fake—for the dragon? And the real maze is…" Michael took the tip of his pencil and traced, very lightly, around the outline of the dragon's tail…"actually here… _around_ the dragon itself?" He outlined the inversion of Mike's maze lines, which created a second maze.

Mike stared at the paper, then eagerly grabbed the pencil from Michael. "I see that, too!" He looked up, his face animated. "I…I've never thought of that before."

"Let's try it. See if it works." Michael felt Sara's eyes on them, but focused on the paper. On his son, rapidly navigating new pathways. If he had his way, he'd stare at him all evening, until Sara dragged them both away for bed.

Mike moved his pencil along, creating the new maze one turn at a time. "Where have you been?" he said, apropos of nothing.

Michael blinked. Did he mean for the past seven years? Mike's entire lifetime, and then some? "Until now?" he probed.

"Mmmhmm."

"Trying to get back to you, Mike."

He kept his eyes on the paper. "All this time?"

Michael definitely felt Sara's eyes boring into the back of them now. He took a deep breath. "Yes."

Mike didn't answer for a while, focusing on a tricky turn he wanted to make into a dead-end. "You must have been very far away."

Sara made a sound, like something had caught in the back of her throat. Mike turned to look at her, and she forced a smile. Michael thought of Yemen: the heat, sand, sweat…the sunsets and call to prayer ringing out over the rooftops. "Yes," he agreed. "Very far away." He looked down at the tip of Mike's pencil, which had paused mid-stroke. "Sometimes you're stuck somewhere, and just can't seem to break free."

Mike tipped his head to one side in thought. "But there's always a way out, isn't there?"

"There is," Michael acknowledged.

"Because you're here now."

"Yes," Michael managed. "I'm here now."


	4. Chapter 4

Day 3

Mike still couldn't sleep alone. Actually, only Sara added the 'still'. Michael felt better equipped to understand his son's need for reassurance, especially considering all he'd seen and heard in the past week. "Not to mention the fact that he lived through an entire day under the impression that both his parents were lost to him forever," he added. Sara had conceded this point, and continued to indulge Mike's need for her presence at bedtime, but the practice was wearing thin. Tonight, she had spent over an hour in and out of his room already, while Michael sat downstairs, feeling like a lousy father and worse husband.

"Dammit," he heard her whisper fiercely in frustration at the bottom of the stairs after her third attempt to extract herself. He met her at the bottom step, Mike's calls for her carrying down the stairs. She looked so tired; she probably hadn't slept through the night herself since Lincoln sent her the video from Yemen. She leaned into Michael's arms. "Is he going to get more assured if I stay? Or is he going to become increasingly fearful if we play into this?"

"I don't know about any of that, Sara," Michael told her. "But going to bed scared? Alone? In the dark? That, I know."

"And?" She looked exhausted.

"And I can't bear the thought of him feeling that way." He raked his hands over his scalp. "But it's your call. Of course."

The silence greeting this statement sounded loud. "No, it's not. It's _our_ call, Michael. Please don't leave me alone in this."

"Right. Of course not. I just meant, because you're more experienced." He swallowed. "I'm in this with you, absolutely." But in what way, exactly? Mike wanted Sara, not him. He swallowed this truth like a bitter pill.

Her voice softened. "What helped when you were young? When you were scared? Lincoln, right?"

He thought about those nights in the dark, of Linc's paper cranes, and later, of folding them for himself in foster homes, each new bedroom bearing unfamiliar shadows and new fears. God, he really was an expert in childhood abandonment and nighttime fears. "You know what? Let me try," he told her.

She lifted her head wearily. "Michael, I don't think that's a good idea."

He knew she sought to spare his feelings. Wanted to protect the progress he'd made with Mike so far. And it was true: the thought of Mike's rejection did edge its way under Michael's skin. But he gave Sara his most self-assured gaze. It wasn't the first time he'd had to fake confidence and hope the real thing showed up later. "My ego can take it, Sara."

Upstairs, he called out quietly when he entered the hallway. "Mike? I'm going to come in, alright?"

The crying instantly stopped, and then Mike answered in a small voice. "Where's my mom?"

"She's right downstairs, but you've worn her out. Let's give her a little break, okay?"

Silence.

Michael stepped through the doorway, and, back to the wall, sank down to the floor on the far side of the room. It was just about the same position he'd found himself in the night of his exoneration, watching Sara and Mike settle into a fitful sleep. Mike remained where he was in his bed, but Michael could feel his eyes on him. "When I was your age, I was scared at night," Michael said conversationally.

More silence.

"To be honest, I was scared all the time, day or night, didn't matter."

He heard the covers shift on Mike's bed, then his small face, just his nose, one eye, and the half-orb of one cheek, appeared outside the Star Wars comforter, cast in the glow of his nightlight. "What were you scared of?"

Michael released a long breath. "Oh, lots of things. My mom was sick, so I worried about her, about what would happen to me if she wasn't there. My brother leaving. Uncle Lincoln was older than me, and it felt like he was always leaving me…going places without me. I was scared he wouldn't come back."

"But, he did, right?"

"He did. He would make me a crane—has he ever made you a crane? A paper one?"

"Like on Mom's back?"

Michael smiled into the dark. "Yes. Like that. Because you see, the crane is like having a little bit of magic with you. A…protector."

"Like a talisman?"

Michael continued to be surprised by his son's sophisticated vocabulary. "Sure. It's our family's talisman. Mine. Your uncle's and mom's. It's helped us lots of times. It can be yours, too, if you want it."

Mike voice sounded painfully fragile. "How can I have it?"

"Well, you can make it." He eyed the spiral-bound notebook of paper amid the shadows on Mike's desk. "Can I come over there? Show you?"

There was a hesitation, Michael couldn't deny that. But it yielded. "Okay."

Michael crossed the room to the desk. "I'm going to turn on your lamp, alright?"

"Not allowed after bedtime," Mike answered. He whispered this conspiratorially.

"Let's take a chance." The room lit to a butter yellow under the flare of the 100 watt bulb. Michael tore a sheet of paper out of the notebook, paused, and turned back to tear out another. He handed one to Mike. "Watch first, then you'll do one, okay?"

He nodded, instantly alert. Michael had time to wonder if a stimulating project was the best thing for him, when the goal was sleep, before the enjoyment of witnessing his son's abject curiosity won out. He sat on the edge of the bed…just shy of falling off the end, and made the folds to his paper slowly, showing Mike each move. Then, Mike spread his own paper out on his lap, pajama-clad knees drawn to his chest to form a table, and made an attempt. He executed the first two folds correctly, and then faltered, forgetting the next and afraid of making a misstep. Carefully, Michael laid a hand over the top of Mike's and guided the next move. His heart hammered in his chest: other than picking Mike up in the lake house and shaking his hand two days ago, this was the first physical touch they'd had.

Mike bent over the paper, deep in concentration, and inwardly, Michael bent double over his heart, which threatened to burst from his chest. Together, they made two more folds, then the last one…the trickiest, where the tiny beak gets its delicate twist. Mike made a frustrated noise on the first attempt, then successfully finished it. "Well done," Michael told him.

Mike held the crane, eying it dubiously. "What does it do?"

Michael instantly thought of Abruzzi, holding his 'duck', and had to bite back a laugh. "Nothing," he said.

Mike's eyes narrowed at him.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Mike. That's just a piece of paper." Mike looked at him more carefully then ever, and Michael continued. "And fear is just air, not even that." He took a breath. "But _you_ changed that paper into a talisman, and you turned that fear off, just by thinking of something else." Mike turned the crane over in his hands, studying the folds anew. "What's your biggest fear, the very worst one, right this second?" Michael pressed.

Mike didn't hesitate. "Mom will need me and I'll be too far away."

Michael was forced to count to five in his head, to resist pulling his son into a full-on embrace. "I understand that one," he managed. "Do you not like being upstairs, when we're downstairs?" he asked.

Mike nodded. He'd laid back down, and Michael thought he should probably turn back off the light, but he hardly dared to move. He had an idea. "You're closer than you think, you know."

Mike shifted to look at him. "How?"

Michael moved off the bed, and waved for Mike to follow him down to the floor. His son slid off the bed behind him. On the ground, Michael army crawled to the far bedpost, where the air conditioning duct blew warm air up into their faces. "Do you know what this is?"

Mike frowned. "I don't like to look at that hole."

"Why? It's a pathway. Don't you want to know where it goes?"

Mike looked dubious again. "Maybe."

Michael placed his ear to the duct, smiled, and motioned to Mike to mimic his movement. "Do you hear that?"

Mike's eyes widened. "That's TV!"

Michael smiled. "That's the downstairs TV, in the living room, where Mom is." He doubted she was watching it; more likely, she was pacing the room, wondering how things were going upstairs.

Mike looked awestruck. "Mom is right down there?"

Michael nodded. "This is called a duct. All houses have them. They're tunnels—pathways—in the house, sending air to all the rooms. This one goes down, and others go in different directions, all over."

"Like a web?"

Michael considered this. "More like one of your mazes. Each pathway goes somewhere specific."

"And this one can take me to Mom and…" He suddenly looked shy. "You? Where you are when I go to bed?"

Michael turned to make eye contact with Mike, to make sure he paid attention. "Yes. But they're not for playing in. I think you can know about them, because you're smart enough to use them only if you really, really need them."

Mike nodded gravely, and picked back up his paper crane. "And mostly I'll just need this."

Michael smiled at him. "How about hopping back in bed?" He clicked off the light, and the room fell into darkness. "Okay?"

He could hear the forced bravado in Mike's voice when he answered. "Yes, okay."

Michael moved back toward the door. "Maybe I'll just sit here for a while, even though you have your crane."

For a moment, it was quiet. "Dad?"

Another first. Michael counted silently in his head again, while his brain shouted from the rooftops. "Yes?"

"There's room for you here, if you want a pillow. It's R2D2."

Against all odds, Michael managed to make his voice sound normal. "Thanks."

He crossed the room quietly, and stretched out on the bed beside his son. They both lay still for a moment, and then slowly, very gently, Michael allowed himself to rest one hand at the crown of Mike's head. His hair, under his fingertips, was soft as silk, and slightly damp from his bath. He felt Mike suck in a little breath, just a hiccup of air, and then his body relaxed beside him. He turned his face into the crook of Michael's arm as he fell asleep, while Michael pinched his own eyes shut to keep from weeping.

* * *

Sara finally slept through the night, without waking. Without even dreaming. Glancing at the bedside clock, she calculated she'd been out cold for nine hours. She decided it felt…life changing. Maybe freedom was actually just a lack of sleep deprivation. Maybe _this_ was the sign that she'd finally made it to the other side of the life she'd lived since leaving the infirmary door unlocked eight years ago.

Michael's side of the bed was empty, but not yet cold. She rose a bit reluctantly, reaching for her silk robe on the chair by the bathroom. She found him in the kitchen, making eggs and toast at the stove. Mike sat on the countertop next to him, bare feet dangling, talking a mile a minute about Odin and Freyr and a battle with swords. Norse mythology, one of his favorite subjects. Sara paused for a moment in the doorway, drinking in the sight. Maybe she _was_ dreaming. This tableau seemed too beautiful to have been conjured by anything other than her subconscious.

"There she is," Michael said brightly, and Mike stopped describing the attributes of Odin long enough to wave a half-eaten wedge of toast in her direction.

"That's all I get, a toast-wave?" she said, greeting Mike with a kiss on the forehead. "You seem chipper. Get enough sleep finally, buddy?"

"Mmmhmm."

"God, I think we all did." She looked at Michael. "Yeah?"

He smiled at her, holding the spatula to one side to place a chaste kiss to the top of her head. "Yeah. Good night, for sure."

She smiled back, and sat down at the table. "Want coffee, Mom?" Mike called.

She looked at him, next to his dad, watched the way they both cocked their heads in the same way anticipating her answer, and had to resist the urge to pinch herself. "No baby. I'm good. I'm completely good right now."

She watched them work in the kitchen, Michael putting Mike in charge of handing him dishes from the cabinets above the counter, then various items from the pantry. After a few minutes, Mike hopped to the floor and brought her breakfast. She blinked in surprise at the sophisticated dish in front of her. "I thought we were just having eggs," she said.

Mike grinned. "It's called 'plating', Mom. The parsley and orange twisty thing make it look better and then it tastes better."

Sara laughed outright. "Okay." Then took a bite. "Oh my God." Mike grinned. She pointed her fork at his creation. "This is amazing." She looked over at Michael, who carried two more plates to the table. "Do I taste truffle oil? I didn't even know I _had_ truffle oil."

She could tell Michael tried not to look smug, but he wasn't succeeding. She didn't care. She was already halfway through her eggs. "It's never really come up before," Michael said, "but I'm actually a dam—darned—good cook."

She laughed again. "Good to know. Whole Foods is a mile down the road. Knock yourself out."

"Dad says cooking is just chemistry," Mike said. "Did you know that, Mom?"

"Hmm. I suppose that's true." To Michael she mouthed, _'Dad?' Wow._

"He's better at cooking than you, so I guess he's better at chemistry."

To this, Sara raised an eyebrow. Michael was swift to intervene. "I've only made one breakfast, Mike," he reminded him. "Why don't you give me a score when I've made 500? Your mom's made way more than that for you, already."

"How do you know how many?"

"I know you're six years, three months, and 23 days old. And I know there are 365 days in a year, and you eat breakfast every day, right?" Mike nodded. "So that's…2,303 breakfasts."

Mike swallowed a bite of egg. "Oh." He looked between his parents. "So that's Mom: 2,303, and Dad: 1."

Michael laughed, raising one finger in the air. "But I have nowhere to go but up."

* * *

Sara reached over Mike on the couch and tapped the screen of his iPad to pause his game. "Two minute warning, kiddo."

He looked up at her. "I think I should get more screen time today, because there isn't school."

She glanced toward Michael, in the office doing something on her computer, then sat down next to her son. "You know there _is_ school, right?" she said softly. "You've just been allowed to be home this week, because of all that's happened."

He scooted closer to her, and she curled an arm around him. She felt him nod into her side. "Did Mrs. A say it was okay?"

"Yes. I talked to Mrs. A. She says she hopes to see you next week. How does that sound?"

"Next week at school? Without you there?"

Sara swallowed. "I'm never there, Mike, at school. And you always do just fine. I bet you'll be glad to see your friends again, and there's music block next week. But I'll pick you up, how about that?"

This seemed to bother Mike. "But you never pick me up. Jacob picks me up." His face suddenly collapsed, and he started to cry. "Because pick-up is during work. Are you not going back to work?"

She glanced sharply again toward the office, then berated herself for it. If Mike needed to talk about this, he was entitled to do so. "I'm going back to work, yes," she said quietly. She rubbed his back, her fingers moving in slow circles that usually calmed him. "But Jacob won't pick you up anymore, honey."

"He's not coming back, right?" Mike's voice sounded impossibly small.

"No."

"Because when someone breaks the law, they go to jail?" He'd stopped crying, mostly, but still breathed in short, sharp gulps.

"Yes." She pinched the bridge of her nose, willing back a cocktail of emotion she couldn't quite identify. Despair? Rage? Sorrow? She felt Michael's eyes on her from the office, his face concerned, but he didn't move to join them, and after a moment, he gently closed the office door, granting them privacy. "But it's okay to miss him."

Mike thought about this, then whispered into her arm, "But I don't miss him."

She resumed her circles on his back. "That's okay, too."

She let him burrow his face into her side for a while, calming himself, until his breathing evened out. "I know a lot of new things are happening," she told him. "I know you didn't ask for any of them."

"I want to be happy like you are," he said into her arm.

Sara exhaled sharply. "Oh baby, I'm a _lot_ of things this week, just like you."

He looked up at her. "But mostly you're happy. I can see it in your face."

She smiled at him, this kid who was so observant. "I missed your dad so much," she told him. "So much. Having him back is just…" She let her words trail off. What could she possibly say that Mike would understand?

He grasped her hand. "It's okay, Mom. It's okay to be mostly happy or even all the way happy. I'm probably…" he paused. "65% happy, and will be almost all the way happy, like 93% probably, soon. Okay?"

She fought back a wave of tears. "Okay, baby."

* * *

From the patio, they both watched their son for a moment. Sara said, "He's pretty great, right? It's not just me?"

Michael sat down, eyes never leaving Mike. "It's not just you." He smiled into the sunshine. "Though I may be a bit biased myself."

They sat silently, Michael listening to the sounds of gentrified suburbia: crickets in the grass. Wind chimes. The distant hum of a lawn mower. "I wasn't sure how it worked," he admitted. "I worried, sometimes. If I ever got to meet him, if I ever got out of there and got to know him, would I instantly feel something? Or what if, what if it was like meeting just anybody?"

Sara smiled, almost to herself.

"Yeah, I didn't need to worry."

She tipped her face upward to look at him fully. "It must have been surreal, at the lake house."

Michael took a breath to keep his voice even. "It was like…like a double-fisted punch of love and terror." He regarded her. "I've felt it before, actually. With you. In that damned shack in Panama." He watched her remember.

"I should have never given you that gun." She leaned her head into his shoulder.

"I would have found another way," he answered. "You were _not_ going to go down for that murder."

She didn't argue this point, and they both sat silently for another moment. "Huh," Michael said.

She lifted her head to look at him. "What?"

"Actually, I've felt that way one other time…that love-terror combo. In Fox River, in the air ducts during the riot. I just hadn't identified the feeling yet. But it was there, in my gut." He looked back at Mike.

Sara laughed lightly, reaching for his hand and squeezing. "Yeah, well, with kids? That gut punch feeling never really goes away. Just so you know."

He smiled at her. "Then I guess I'll learn to live with it."


	5. Chapter 5

Week 2

The CIA-appointed lawyer hefted his calfskin leather double-gusseted law satchel onto Sara's dining room table and popped it open with a graceful click. "I don't usually make house calls from the city," he told Michael, "but the Director made it clear that for the Scofields, I'd be on the 6 am train."

"And we appreciate your time," Michael said smoothly. He knew the type: $2000 suit, manicured fingernails, apartment in Gramercy or Dumbo. No doubt devoid of wit or human empathy. No matter, as long as he did his job. Michael was about to offer coffee when the front door opened. Sara strode in, dropping her purse on the table.

"All good?" Michael asked. Mike had started back to school two days earlier, and it hadn't been completely smooth sailing.

"So far," she answered. She turned to the lawyer and held out her hand. "Sara Scofield. Sorry I'm late."

"Martin Brazek." They sat down at the table, and Brazek didn't waste time on preamble. "I have to tell you two, I've had fun these past few days."

Michael raised an eyebrow. Maybe he'd misjudged this guy. "Fun?"

"Bringing a man back from the dead, even just on paper? Hell yeah, that's fun. Haven't been this challenged in a while." Michael smiled. Sara just looked at Brazek nervously, and he hastened on. "Do you two want the good news first, or the really good news?"

Michael looked between the lawyer and Sara in surprise. "Honestly, we're not very used to things going the way we planned, so maybe start slow, and we can work our way up."

Brazek laughed, drawing a stack of folders from his briefcase and extracting one paper…a deed. "Alright, so Michael. "As you know, most of your assets before your incarceration at Fox River had been liquidated or otherwise redistributed, by you. At the time of your exoneration…that would be exoneration #1," he clarified, "three major assets were unfrozen and transferred back to your name: your loft in River West, Chicago, current market value of 1.2 million, your savings account with Chase with a balance of $232,487, and your stock portfolio, valued today at $168,200." He glanced up at Michael. "You kind of neglected a few key shares for awhile there, chief."

"I'll get back on that," Michael said sardonically.

"After your 'death' seven years ago," Brazek continued, pausing to put the word in exaggerated air quotes, "these assets were transferred, per your will, to Sara Tancredi Scofield." He flicked one finger in Sara's direction.

Michael nodded. This he knew. "And how much is left?" he asked benignly.

Sara said nothing, and Brazek flipped through some notes on a legal pad. "All of it."

They both looked at Sara. "You didn't touch the savings?" Michael asked. "Why not?"

"I…"

"And the stock and property could have been gifted into Mike's name, if you didn't want it." He felt as though he'd had a gift thrust back in his face.

"It's not that I didn't want it, Michael. I didn't want to…I don't know…touch it, I guess."

Brazek held up a hand. "Hold your squabbling until later, kids. I'm on the clock. The bottom line: since Michael's miraculous rebirth, all those assets have been transferred back into his name." He turned his unique brand of banter Sara's way. "Sorry, but you had your chance." She responded to this with only a raised eyebrow. Undeterred, Brazek looked back down at his papers, and added, "Oh! There was also a Cadillac XTS Limited, color…black. This is pre-Fox River," he reminded Michael.

Michael smiled. "The XTS is still around?"

"Ah, no," Brazek answered. "It would appear it was in impound, and then Sara deeded it several years ago to a Lincoln Burrows…"

 _Sorry,_ Sara mouthed. Michael laughed. "Ok, so that's gone, yeah?"

"Uh, yeah. Technically, you can take Burrows to small claims court for the depreciated value of $16K."

Sara and Michael both laughed. "Uh, no. What else?" Michael asked.

Brazek slid a folder toward Michael. "Restored legal documents, all with your correct name and date of birth, original social security number, most recent passport number. Merry Christmas."

Michael opened the file folder to find, in a neat stack, a passport, birth certificate, Loyola diploma, and social security card. "What about a driver's license?" he asked.

"Yeah, those guys at the DMV are pricks. You'll have to stand in line like everybody else." Michael smiled. "Now for the really good part." The man talked a mile a minute. "You ready?" He looked at both of them. "You two are still married. Mazel Tov."

They looked at each other. Sara began to smile. "We are?"

"Never weren't, since Michael never 'died'." He did the air quotes thing again, and seemed to enjoy it just as much the second time around. "Your second marriage, Sara, to Jacob Ness, was technically never legal, since you had a living spouse at the time of the marriage."

Michael slid a look to Sara, who smiled even harder, then suddenly threw her arms around him. Michael let out an oomph of breath as he absorbed the momentum of her embrace. His chair skid several inches across the kitchen floor. Brazek snapped his fingers at them to regain their attention. "So that's either polygamy or fraud, Sara, you can decide which. Doesn't really matter, because either way, it's added to Ness' rap sheet."

She pulled back from Michael. "Wait. He's going to serve time for…our marriage?"

"Along with the murder of Harlan Gaines and a nice laundry list of other charges, yes."

Sara's jaw set as she sat back down. "Good."

Brazek mumbled something under his breath about a woman scorned, then said, "So no new documents necessary for you, Sara. I have to thank you for keeping your, er, Michael's, name. Saved me a bucketload of time. Or rather, the taxpayers of this country a bucketload of cash." Michael reached for her hand across the table and gave it a squeeze. He'd neglected to tell her how thankful he'd been for this gesture as well. "Which brings us to just one last thing," Brazek concluded. "Any assets from your so-called marriage to Ness will now need to be unraveled." He looked at Sara expectantly. "If you can put together a list, account numbers, that sort of thing, I can get to work burning through more taxpayers' money."

Sara looked confused. "Assets? There are none."

Brazek looked incredulous. "None? No joint bank accounts, shared credit cards, no loans in both names, the like? Most marriages are littered with this stuff."

She shook her head slowly. "No, none. I never let him—I mean, he never paid for anything for me or Mike. Ever."

Brazek's eyes widened at Michael. "She won't use your money, she won't take his…sounds like you've got the perfect wife, Michael."

Michael humored him with a smile, but eyed Sara hard. "Why not?" he asked.

She just shook her head, like she couldn't quite explain it. "I made my own income," she said. "He was never Mike's father; I made it clear he was never to be responsible for him."

Michael felt his throat swell painfully. Sara's unwavering loyalty to him in quiet, unexpected ways continued to catch him unawares. Brazek whistled under his breath. "Lucky man," he repeated.

"He didn't see it that way, actually," Sara acknowledged. "It drove him kind of crazy." She slid Michael one of her sheepish looks, and he barely resisted the urge to wink at her. They walked Brazek out, and when the door closed behind him, Sara let out a long breath. "I'm sorry I didn't use the savings," she said immediately.

"You waited for your father's inheritance to come through instead? Why?"

She turned away from him. Deliberately, he thought. "I don't know, Michael. It was just there at the right time, I guess."

He didn't buy that. He'd made sure, double checked, even, that his savings would be transferred into Sara's name immediately…after. "But Sara—"

"You want to know why?" She whirled on him. "Cashing in on that savings account would have made it final, alright?" She swallowed hard. "And I don't want to fight about this right now."

He frowned. "I"m not fighting with you. I just liked thinking that money made your life a little bit easier."

She fought a smile and lost. "You can't buy me off, Scofield. I thought I made that clear with the filet mignon. Which you still owe me."

Michael smiled back and called her bluff. "Okay, let's go."

She laughed outright. "It's 10:30 in the morning." She turned back into the kitchen.

He snagged her hand, pulling her back to face him. "Then can I just say one thing?" She narrowed her eyes at him, but he forged ahead, tipping his hand with a quirk of his lips. "Happy…seventh anniversary?"

This time, he was ready to receive her full body embrace.

* * *

On Thursday, Sara returned to work, and Michael took on school pick-up duty. They prepped Mike together, who had an alarming list of concerns. What if Michael wasn't in the right place at dismissal? (He would be, whatever it took.) Where would they meet up? Near the butterfly garden like he used to with Jacob, or in front of the classroom door? (The door.) Did Michael know about the loading zone-only curb, and not to park there? (He did now.) Did Mrs. A know what he looked like, so she'd dismiss Mike when she saw him? (Hmm.) Was Michael on Mike's approved pick-up list filed in the school office? (He'd stop at the office first with his shiny new driver's license.) Did he know he had to be buzzed into said office? And how could he be buzzed in, if he wasn't approved? (Good question.)

Michael said, "It's going to be absolutely fine, and no problem at all, Mike." He gave him a confident smile. Then, when his son scooted back from the kitchen table to get dressed for school, Sara leaned over to kiss the top of his head.

"It's going to be absolutely fine, and no problem at all, Michael."

He laughed hollowly.

At the school, he parked carefully in a space labeled as a 'green zone', then checked his watch. Twenty minutes until dismissal. He followed the signs directing him to the front office, and pressed the buzzer outside the door. "Parent ID number?" a displaced voice requested.

"Uh, I need to get one, I believe?" Michael answered. The door clicked, and he pushed it open and stepped into the school office. A harried-looking receptionist sat at the desk. When she glanced up at him, however, she looked a little less harried. "Good afternoon," she said pleasantly.

Obviously, a little charm would go a long way. He turned it on. "Good afternoon…" he eyed the nameplate on the desk. "Nancy."

"How can I help you?" She definitely seemed willing enough.

"I need to pick up my son today. My wife called to put my name on his uh, approval list? But I believe you need my ID."

She smiled pleasantly at him. "Are you new to the school, then?"

"I am. My son is not. Mike, er Michael Scofield. He's in first grade with—"

"Oh my God," she said. She mimicked the deer-in-the-headlights look one might give a celebrity. "You're Mike's father?"

Michael nodded. He leaned over the counter, trying to see if she was going to make any move to pull up a file or open a record, but for a moment, she sat frozen. Clearly, she knew part of his story, and was dying to know the rest. "That means you're…"

"Michael Scofield. Uh, senior." He slid his ID across the counter.

"His mother called," Nancy supplied.

"Yes, I had said…" He glanced at his watch again. "If you could just…"

She blinked. "Yes! Of course." She took his ID and scanned it, then passed him a form. "For the background check." He hesitated, hand halfway outreached for the paper, old habits dying hard. Nancy caught this. "A pain, I know. But it only takes a few seconds to run through the system, and then you're field trip approved, all that."

He took a breath. "Okay." He filled the short form out with his social security number, not exactly as confident as Nancy that he would be 'field trip approved' in seconds. She scanned the form along with his license, and they both fell silent, Nancy fiddling with a paper clip on her desk, Michael watching several seconds tick by on the industrial wall clock above him. Moment of truth: how well had the CIA actually taken care of him? Then something on Nancy's screen beeped, and she looked up at him brightly. "All set."

He covered his surprise with another easy smile. "Thanks, Nancy." She handed him a small card with a school ID number and a guest badge, then blinked at him again as he beat a hasty retreat.

In front of Mike's classroom, parents had already gathered for the dismissal bell, just as Sara had told them they would. But 'parents', Michael realized now, actually meant 'mothers'. The five or six women in Lululemon yoga pants who talked quietly amongst themselves all fell silent at his arrival. He tried another smile. "Good afternoon."

Five stares greeted this benign hello. The sixth woman beamed at him, stepping forward to extend her hand. "Well _hello_ there. I'm Carol," she said. "And you are…?"

"Michael. Nice to meet you…all."

"And who do you belong to, Michael?" Belatedly, he realized he still gripped his paper guest badge.

"I'm Mike's father." Not knowing if that would suffice, he added, "In first grade."

"Oh my god," Carol said. Michael inwardly rolled his eyes. What was _with_ this school? "Are you _Sara's_ Michael?"

At this, the other women seemed to either get over their awkwardness or stare even harder. "Becca, Jen, get over here," Carol urged. "This is _Sara's_ Michael," she told them, every word weighed with significance.

"Uh, yeah," Michael answered. "So, do you know when the door opens, or…"

"So you're here now, right? Back for good?"

"Jesus, Carol," the woman named Jen scolded.

"I never left intentionally," Michael answered. All but Carol seemed to hear the bite in his voice.

"Well, we just love Sara," one of the women said, after an awkward pause. "She's so busy, though."

"Well, yes." He supposed that was true? "She works during the day…" He trailed off. Maybe these women worked too. What did he know?

No one seemed to take offense. "At the county clinic, right? That is _so_ brave. Working with all those…addicts and stuff? She's just…amazing."

Everyone seemed to agree on this point. "We attend the fund raiser there each year," Jen said. "Substance abuse something-or-other."

Michael nodded. Mercifully, a bell rang above their heads, drowning out whoever talked next. Kids streamed out the door, and Michael blinked at the sheer number of small feet, oversized backpacks, and jackets trailing along the ground. He looked for Mike.

"Tell Sara I said hi," Carol said, touching his arm, her fingers lingering on his sleeve.

He stared at her until she removed her hand. "Absolutely."

Mike emerged, to Michael's immense gratitude. He could still feel eyes on him as he approached. "Hey," he said. "There you are." He knelt down and relieved him of his backpack. It felt heavy. A peek inside revealed a whole stack of books. "You need all this stuff?"

Mike nodded. "Mrs. A gave me extra."

Michael frowned. "For missing last week?"

Mike didn't seem perturbed. "I asked for extra."

"Oh." The crowd of parents and kids was thinning, and Michael turned toward the car.

"Mr. Scofield?" He and Mike both turned.

"That's Mrs. A," Mike whispered.

"I just wanted to introduce myself." The woman held out her hand. "Claire. Got a minute?"

"Sure," Michael said. They turned back toward the classroom. "It's nice to meet you. Mike's a fan."

Mike cast him a glance of betrayal at this, and Michael bit his tongue. He hadn't known this was a secret. Mrs. A covered his faux pas gracefully. "Well I'm a fan of his, too." She smiled at Mike. "And I'm afraid he knows it."

Mike offered a flustered smile. "I want to show you my animal report," he told Michael. He trotted over to his desk, and Claire turned back to Michael.

"He's done well this week," she said quietly. "I wanted you to know. Sara's kept me in the loop, so I could be aware."

Michael released a breath. "I'm glad."

Mike returned with a paper. He'd drawn a detailed picture of a hammerhead shark, followed by two full pages of careful handwriting. "They're in the family Sphyrnidae," Mike supplied.

Michael turned the page to see a diagram of a hammerhead habitat, migration patterns, and hunting technique. "Wow, this is great, Mike."

Claire looked over his shoulder. "He did that in Mr. House's classroom. For TAG. He goes there a few hours each morning, for his core instruction."

"Michael looked up in question. "He doesn't have core instruction in here?"

Claire shook her head. "Mr. House teaches a mixed age group in Talented and Gifted. The kids in this classroom are not doing this level of work, Mr. Scofield."

"I see." He looked down at Mike, and handed him back his report. He laid a hand on the top of his head, a touch he knew Mike felt comfortable accepting from him. "Thanks for showing me."

At dinner that evening (cooked by Michael), Sara wanted to know how pick-up had gone.

"Dad met Mrs. A, plus all the moms," Mike supplied.

"Yeah?" Sara asked.

"Yeah, when I came out, he was meeting Riley's mom, and Devon's mom, and Sadie's mom, and Emma's mom, and—"

"Okay, I think she gets it," Michael interjected. To Sara, he added, "Those women are intense."

She snorted into her pasta. "Well they owe me now. I suspect I've supplied them with about ten years' worth of gossip in one week."

Michael smiled. "I think you may be right."

* * *

The panic attack hit Michael in the middle of the next afternoon, as he retrieved a soda water from the fridge for Sara. She heard him curse under his breath before bracing his legs and gripping the countertop to ward against the impending vertigo. She hadn't seen what triggered it, but it could have been anything: the car alarm beeping down the street, even the can of soda rolling out of the fridge and hitting the floor. She crossed the room in three strides, placing her hands over his. "I'm here. Just breathe."

He gasped for air, eyes pinched closed against some fear she—and maybe he—couldn't name. The psychologist at Sara's clinic thought the attacks were most likely symptoms of PTSD; she wanted badly to ask him about his time in Ogygia, but bit back her questions every time, unsure whether she really wanted to know. The PTSD episodes Sara had witnessed so far had been at night, however, compounded by lack of sleep or nightmares. Once, the sensation had come upon him while they'd been together in bed, and he'd pulled abruptly back from her mid-caress. "Give me a minute," he'd hissed, pushing her hand away when she'd tried to comfort him. He'd grit his teeth, breathing through some horror she couldn't see. "I'm afraid I might be rough if I touch you right now."

"I might not mind," she'd whispered, but he'd been too forgone to hear. Today, he was more cognizant, lifting his head briefly to scan the room. "Where's…Mike? Don't…let him see. Me like this."

She spotted Mike on the lawn, trying to get his drone in the air. "He's not in here," she soothed. "He won't know."

"Dammit I hate this," Michael groaned again, sweat dripping from his forehead, beading on his nose. He gulped more air. Sara leaned into him, talking into his ear.

"Breathe in," she commanded quietly. She drew a breathe alongside him. "Out. Good."

She knew when the attack had passed by the way Michael's fingers relaxed on the counter top, his knuckles changing back from white to pink. She handed him a clean dish towel, which he used to wipe the sweat from his face. "Michael…" she began carefully.

He sighed in defeat, staring resolutely out the kitchen window at Mike, who'd just dive-bombed his drone into the grass. "I know."

"Seeing someone about this doesn't mean—"

"I know," he said again.

"Maybe, we could _all_ see someone." She tried to suggest this casually, though in truth, she felt it was vitally important. Sooner or later, they'd all need to deal with Michael's return head on.

He looked alarmed at this. "All together?"

She knew there were things, many things, he didn't want Mike to know, and she didn't disagree. "Sometimes at the clinic, family sessions are broken up in various configurations," she said. "I thought we could find someone who'd be able to do something similar: all of us, for instance, talking about things Mike needs to hear or process, then you and me, or just you…whatever you want."

He looked at her then, really looked at her face, and gave in with a resigned smile. "If you think you can find the right person, I'm game to try." He touched her arm briefly on his way out the back door. "For now, I'm going to see if he wants help with that drone."

She watched him retreat, his shoulders square as he walked across the lawn to their son. He said something out of her earshot that made Mike forget his frustration with his toy and smile. They carried the drone to the patio table to perform some sort of mechanical operation to its insides. Sara watched Michael work, deft fingers untangling thin wires and pointing Mike toward the tiny parts needing replacing or fixing.

Even so attuned to minute detail, Michael rarely overlooked the big picture. Sara could only hope he would understand her need for him to be healthy and whole for her. Would he really seek help? Or would he continue to satisfy his need to help everyone else first?


	6. Chapter 6

Week 3

"I think I want to try to surf this year," Mike announced cheerfully at the dinner table.

"Surf?" Michael questioned, amused. "Where? On the Finger Lakes?"

Mike didn't seem dissuaded. "No, in Panama," he clarified brightly.

Sara stopped chewing. Michael turned to her. "You're going to Panama?" He wasn't sure how he felt about this: on the one hand, he and Sara had enjoyed all-too-brief moments of real happiness there. On the other hand, she'd been tortured in Panama. They'd both been locked away from one another. He'd thought her dead there.

Mike hadn't stopped making his case. "LJ always says he'll take me out to try," he said.

"When are you going to Panama?" Michael asked again.

"We always go," Mike supplied. "Every November, for a whole week."

Sara found her voice. "I don't know if we'll go this year, Mike," she said quietly.

"But we always go," he repeated. His voice held a little hitch. It was a trait Michael was learning to recognize; when faced with changes to routine or schedule, Mike didn't always cope gracefully.

Sara responded with her usual calm acknowledgement of his feelings laced with firm authority. "I understand that we always go, and that you look forward to it. If we don't go—"

"But we always—"

"If we don't go," Sara repeated, "and don't interrupt me again, Mike, maybe we can meet LJ and Uncle Lincoln and Fernando somewhere else, somewhere fun for all of us."

"But Panama _is_ fun for all of us."

His words caused Sara's jaw to clench around a retort she bit back. She stared hard at Mike until something unsaid seemed to sink in. He slumped down in his chair, pushing his plate away angrily. He glared at Michael, which surprised him; Sara had been the one to say the trip might not happen. "Thanks for ruining surfing with my only cousin," he mumbled.

" _Ruining…surfing?"_ Sara was now livid. She pushed back swiftly from the table and pointed unequivocally to the stairs. "Out. Now. To your room."

Mike hesitated just a second, like maybe Michael's presence would save him from full-blown punishment. Michael sat equally frozen in place, trying to interpret why an emotional landmine had just exploded around him.

"Michael!" Sara shouted, and Michael knew she wasn't speaking to _him_. "Right. This. Instant."

He obeyed in a teary huff, taking the stairs in angry stomps. Sara sank back down in her chair and braced her head in her hands. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

Michael chose his words carefully. "To be honest, I'm still trying to connect the dots."

She looked at him with some frustration. "Did you think we wouldn't mark the anniversary?" She still sounded a little angry.

The full picture dawned. "November 4th," he said slowly. The date on the death certificate Brazek had shredded last week. The date on his tombstone, he'd been told.

"We go every year to the…grave." The word caused Sara's head to sink deeper into her hands, as if it held physical weight. "Maybe because it's so damned depressing, we've tried to make a bit of a reunion out of it. Add some brevity. Mike really only remembers the last few years. The early ones…" She trailed off, keeping her eyes hidden behind her hands. "Well there wasn't any _surfing_ , that's for sure."

There were times when Michael could almost forget how wide and deep the ripples of his disappearance from their lives spread. Then there were times like this. He reached for her hand to gently tug it from her face, but she twisted away.

"Michael, I can't." Her hands went to her forehead. "I'm sorry, I really am, but you just can't know…you don't have any idea how it's felt."

He watched her carefully, but didn't try to touch her again. "I have some idea."

She whirled back to face him. "Not seven years worth."

"No," he acknowledged. "I can only imagine what that has been like." When he thought about it, when he reversed their fates in his mind, he imagined losing Sara for so long would feel like drowning, one meter, one day at a time. Or like someone pressing constantly on the deepest of bruises. How he hated that he'd done this to her.

She sighed deeply. "It never occurred to me to tell Mike that without our reason for going, we might not go. He understands most things so easily, sometimes I forget he's only six." She rubbed her temples with the pads of her fingers. "And sometimes, frankly, his reactions to things can be brutally logical."

Michael nodded. This he could understand.

"I need to go deal with him," she said now. "God, that pissed me off."

Michael chanced a single laugh. "It was certainly a ballsy statement he made." He stood over her chair and touched her shoulder. When she didn't pull away, he wrapped his arms around her from behind. She gripped his arms tightly.

"I think I may need to never go there again," she whispered.

"Then we won't," he answered. "And don't get up. Let me." It was the least he could do to still the ripples that still spread.

Upstairs, Mike was on his bed, staring stonily at his rock and seashell collection. Michael realized now that many of his favorites may have come from his trips to Panama. He stood in the doorway for a moment, studying the hermit crab shell in his son's hands. "Go away," Mike said, without turning around.

"Why?" If Mike wanted to deal in logic, that was fine with Michael. He knew this wasn't the way Sara would approach this, but he appreciated that she gave him the freedom to interact with Mike in his own way.

He whispered his reason in the direction of his collection. "Because now you don't like me anymore."

Michael swallowed the wave of sorrow this statement induced. Logic was one thing, but _flawed_ logic wouldn't do. "Mike? I know we just met each other. So I haven't told you this yet, but…" He decided to take the plunge and dive in. "The fact is, I love you. I have always loved you, and even when you say something unkind to me, I still love you."

Mike cast him a cautious look over his shoulder. "That's true?"

"You know I don't lie to you." He watched Mike consider this. After a moment, he nodded solemnly. He began to rise from his bed, then hesitated, wavering there, on his knees. He stared at Michael with…he wasn't sure…longing, almost? And then he was off the bed and across the room. Before Michael had time to compute the sudden movement, Mike flung himself into his arms.

"I don't really want…you to be…in that grave… by the beach…so I can…surf," he cried.

"I'm glad," Michael answered, his chest tight, his voice raw. He cleared his throat roughly, then closed his eyes, allowing himself to fully process this first real embrace: Mike's small body pressed against him, his cheek against Michael's chest, his arms, somehow both tender and fiercely strong around his neck.

"Does LJ really know how to surf?" he asked, trying to picture it.

"Yeah, but I was scared of the waves last year."

Michael ran a hand over the top of Mike's head, almost but not quite running his fingers through his hair. For some reason, his hesitation made his heart ache. "You know, your mom doesn't want to go to Panama this year, because while she likes seeing you have fun, it's not always a happy place for her. Can you understand that?"

He felt a small nod.

"But we could go somewhere else. Somewhere warm, good for surfing."

"I don't know any other places," Mike whispered.

A memory tugged at Michael, causing him to smile into Mike's hair. "Have you ever been to Baja?" he asked.

* * *

Their second weekend together, Sara dropped Mike off at his usual playdate and returned home to catch Michael in the downstairs hallway, frowning at the framed photo of Mike holding his first fishing rod. "You disapprove?" she asked lightly. She was kidding, mostly, but did wonder: what things would Michael have done differently, had he been present in Mike's life from the start? In what ways would she fall short, in his estimation, once they were past the honeymoon phase of this reunion?

"Of course not," Michael said easily. Too easily. "Only, I know you've whitewashed these for me." He indicated the whole wall of family photos, scrubbed clean of Jacob. "I do know that life for the past seven years hasn't been all summer vacations and birthday parties."

Sara couldn't argue. "But this is what you're supposed to do, right?" she said. "Frame the idyllic stuff, and pretend it's all been a day at the beach?"

"Where are the matching outfits?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She remembered the reference, but tried not to let him see how much the reminder hurt. They'd been so close that day, closer than he knew, to having that picture perfect life. "I was saving those."

He turned from the photos to look her in the eye. "I want to know, Sara. All of it, the day-to-day, the nitty gritty."

"Really?" She felt half-hopeful, as she had during their long-ago conversation about 'hands on' parenting, and half-jaded…she knew too much now, knew the ways in which she'd already failed. She was far from the perfect parent. "You want to know about stomach flu and potty training and sleepless nights and separation anxiety at daycare?"

"Yes."

"Or do you mean you want to hear about the really shitty stuff, like grief so heavy, it makes it hard to get out of bed to give your kid a diaper change?" She got the reaction she deserved; he flinched. She knew, even as she said it, it was wrong to take the offensive in this way. She was just so desperately afraid of him finding out how bad it had really been, those first weeks and months. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "That wasn't fair."

He closed his eyes, drew a breath and released it slowly.. "It kills me, what you went through. It killed me then, and it continues to kill me today, over and over, Sara." He opened his eyes. "For the record, I was alone during those years too. Every day, missing everything and everyone important to me."

The problem with blame was, it was a two-sided coin. So was regret and sorrow. "Dammit, I know," she conceded. A thought occurred to her, and she pushed it back, but it persisted. A solution to the empty hole Michael faced every day, or simply more pain for both of them? She didn't know for sure, but…"You know what? Come with me."

She didn't elaborate, but could feel his curiosity as he followed her into the office. She reached into the closet and fished a shoebox from the back corner. She hefted it out, and set it unceremoniously on the desk. "Start at the back, and work your way forward."

He read Lincoln's sloppy handwriting, in Sharpie ink, on the side of the box. "MJ?"

"I told your brother not to do the junior thing, but he didn't listen." He looked at her curiously again. "I wasn't…up to…memory keeping for a time. He told me I'd be glad later, and he was right."

He opened the lid to find the neat stack of CD-ROM disks and handful of thumb drives that first Lincoln had archived, followed by Sara. Each one had a label; the early ones, at the back of the box were in Linc's handwriting: Mike 0-6 m, Mike 6-12 m, Mike 2. The later ones, Mike 3-6, were on the thumb drives, with Sara's handwriting marking the age. Michael reached for the earliest CD, and slid it into the drive on Sara's desktop computer. She wanted to retreat, but forced herself the stay put.

The first image on the CD was askew and slightly blurred, the photographer getting the shot from an odd angle. It was newborn baby Mike, in his hospital-issue beanie cap, lying in the basinet they'd wheeled next to Sara's bed. She wasn't in the frame. What Michael didn't know: the photo was poorly taken because she'd been telling Lincoln to go away. She wasn't proud of this. He's snapped the shot as a consolation prize as he'd retreated, respecting her wishes.

"Is this the day he was born?" Michael asked softly.

She forced an important thread of honesty to rise to the surface. "The day after."

Michael glanced at her sharply. "Lincoln wasn't there when he was born?" He sounded angry. "I made him promise, if anything happened to me, he would be."

She remembered that day, how even the thought of Lincoln there made her feel claustrophobic. Like she'd suffocate, be snuffed out, while he took too much of Mike from her. She hadn't wanted to share. To Michael, she said, "Labor and delivery don't follow an exact schedule. He got there when he could."

He touched the screen where baby Mike's cheeks scrunched up into baby Mike's alert, open eyes. Newborns weren't customarily considered pretty, but their son had been. He said, "He was perfect."

"Yes." To this, she could wholeheartedly agree. She settled on the arm rest of the desk chair, and he slipped his free hand around her back. His fingers grazed the skin over her spine just under the hem of her shirt. "A perfect baby."

He turned and caught the look on her face, and his fingers stilled. She was afraid of what he saw there. "It was hard?" he whispered. "It was bad?"

"It was normal," she told him. "Textbook." But she laid her head heavily against his shoulder and let it stay there. "But it was pretty awful in other ways." An echo of familiar sorrow touched her, and she shivered. "I missed you so much that day," she remembered. "I wanted to show you…I wanted so badly for you to see..."

She felt terrible, watching him absorb the impact of this. But he said only, "You knew he would be a boy?"

She recalled the astute relief she'd felt when she'd found out, how this baby's gender had seemed like a gift given exactly when she needed it most. "Yes."

"It mattered to you?"

"Yes," she breathed. "It shouldn't have, but it did, very much." She'd needed him to be a Michael, as unhealthy as that probably was.

He clicked to the next photo on the CD: naked Mike in a baby bath, this time, with Sara's hand in the shot. She'd still be resentful of Lincoln's presence that day, but hadn't had the energy or, to her relief, the meanness of spirit to shut him out any longer. The next dozen or so featured Mike during the first two weeks of life, during which Lincoln camped out in the cramped living room of Sara's rental and stubbornly refused to leave. He'd been very helpful, actually, and she'd finally surrendered to the opportunity to close her eyes to the world for long stretches at a time, under the pretense of rest and recovery. Michael viewed the photos one by one, pausing a long time on each, analyzing everything about each shot.

"This was the way he liked to be held?" he asked, after scrutinizing a photo of Mike swaddled in his blanket, resting in the crook of her arm. Sara's cheek rested on the top of Mike's head in the photo, and looking at it now, she dared to think she'd almost looked at peace, if not quite content.

She found a genuine smile. "The tighter I wrapped him in that blanket, the happier he seemed," she said. "Lincoln thought it was ridiculous. Called him a human burrito."

"You really never thought of naming him anything else?" He'd clicked onto Mike's second month of life; without Lincoln there to snap the photos, there had been few.

She was resolute. "Never."

"After your father, maybe."

She shook her head. She knew Michael would never fully understand this, but she'd needed his name to stay alive, after she thought she'd lost him forever. Not just remembered, or mourned, or respected, but _alive._ And in Mike, it did just that: she watched Michael click through the photos, finishing one disk and going to the next. She watched with him as their son grew at super-sonic speed on the screen: first tooth, first step, first haircut. Michael moved through the photos greedily; Sara couldn't tell whether the photos, or rather his absence in them, upset him. He kept his expression frustratingly controlled, his face blank of emotion.

"What are you thinking?" she asked quietly. He had arrived at the last of Lincoln's archive, the two-year-old CD. On the screen Mike pet a bunny at a fair, his chubby face upturned toward the camera…toward his uncle.

Michael seemed slow to answer. "I'm thinking I was robbed of even more than I thought." he said softly. The mask he wore slid, and for a moment, Sara saw raw pain. When he looked over at her, however, his face was smooth again. "But I'm so glad to see these. I'll have to thank my brother for being stubborn."

Sara played with her hands in her lap for a moment, debating, then said, "You should know, it took me a while, to get my head on straight." She continued to stare at her lap. "I wasn't…I wasn't in a good place, for some time." She chanced at glance at his face. God, how she wanted to be the best version of herself for him.

Michael touched her cheek with the brush of two fingertips, and when she stilled, he cupped her chin and tipped her face to him. He bent to kiss her, just a soft taste of her lips at first, then more ardently when she responded in turn. HIs mouth opened against hers hungrily then, and he kissed her deeply, his hands moving to the back of her neck, tangling in her hair. She embraced the sensation that always came over her when Michael took her away like this: she was a train barreling down the tracks, lost to anything but his caress, the heat of his mouth, the stroke of his tongue. Desire shot down her belly in a mad rush of want; every time, being with him like this reminded her of a high.

She pulled back just enough to speak against his mouth. "I never used," she told him definitively. "Never came close. Without Mike, though, I don't know…"

"I do," he whispered. He stroked her hair, threading it between his fingertips. "You would have come out on the other side, just as you did, either way. You're the strongest, truest person I have ever known." He didn't let her argue this point, closing his mouth back over hers and kissing her until she ran out of breath. "God I love you," he said, as she gulped a breath, and she felt tears rolling down her face as he lifted her up from the edge of the chair. He guided her blindly until her back and butt hit the back of the closed door and Michael pressed her there, devouring her. She reached for the waistband of his pants, fumbling with his belt, and his mouth broke contact with hers long enough to lift her shirt up and over her head. His hands found her bra, then her breasts, and he cupped and stroked until she thought her knees would give out and she'd melt into a puddle on the floor. But he'd freed her of her pants by then, and hefted her up, hooking her legs around his waist and holding both their weight against the door. She moaned as he slid a finger under the thin fabric of her underwear to slide them aside, and again as he entered her in one smooth, swift motion. They both paused then, breathing hard, Michael's forehead against hers.

"Again," she commanded roughly, and he complied, thrusting into her with another long stroke. "Harder," she breathed, and apparently, this was a request to which he was ready to comply. He filled her over and over, his lips on her neck and throat, his hands still on her chest, until she tightened her legs around him so hard she would have worried about hurting him, had she had space in her head to care. They came together almost violently, Sara still pressed to the door, Michael bracing one hand against it, the other behind her head.

Afterward, he leaned heavily into her, his lips on her forehead. He drew a shaky breath. "That was…unexpected."

She closed her eyes, smiling at the tickle of his mouth on her skin. "Uh, yeah. That was a lot of things."

He kissed her temple, catching a bead of sweat, and ran his hands back through her hair. Slowly, feeling came back into Sara's legs and she realized how badly they ached, still braced against Michael's hip. She slid down his body to plant her feet on the floor.

After a time, they looked through the rest of Mike's archived photos together. Sara felt more relaxed, better able to sit quietly, her head resting again on Michael's shoulder, to view these memories. God, she hadn't even realized how tightly wound she'd been. Slowly, he clicked through ages 3-present day, Sara leaning toward the screen beside him. Now, Jacob's presence graced a few of the photos, though never many.

"This must have been just after I'd been framed for Gaines' murder," Michael said at one point, and Sara felt a now-familiar stab of guilt. What had she been doing, when Michael had been sent to Yemen and locked up in that hellhole? Worrying about work? Taking Mike to the park? The idea sat like a stone in her stomach.

"I feel like I should have known, somehow," she whispered.

He turned from the screen, his expression resolute. "Please don't think that way," he said. "I didn't give you the opportunity to help me. I took away that choice. No blame lies with you." He ran a hand over her head. "When you feel guilty, remember that."

She told him she'd try. And she did smile more easily as the images grew more recent: Mike in his soccer uniform, Mike posing in his backpack at the start of each school year, Mike celebrating birthdays. "Wait, go back," she said, until Michael reversed to a photo of their son holding a wiggling puppy in his arms. "Fernando tried to buy that dog for him from a flea market in Panama City last year. I got there just in time."

Michael laughed. "Of course Sucre would be a sucker for something so adorable." He studied the photo again, then turned to Sara. "He'd buy Mike a gift? Just because?"

Sara smiled. "That man loves you, Michael. He'd buy your son anything he wanted, if he could."

They both thought about Sucre, his loyalty and love, and where Michael, might (or might not) be without him. "I was a lucky man, the day I got him as a cellmate," he said.

She couldn't disagree.

* * *

Michael had noticed that Mike tended to ponder things while riding in the car. Today, he sat quietly in the backseat after Michael picked him up from his playdate with Dylan, Heather's son. Sara remained silent as well, checking her email on her phone in the front seat. He darted a quick glance in the rearview mirror. "What are you thinking about?" he asked his son.

Mike turned his attention from the window to the front. Michael caught his eye briefly in he mirror before redirecting his attention to the road. "Today, we were watching baseball on TV," he said. "Heather said she and Larry met at a Mets game, but then Larry said it was actually at a bar _after_ the game, and she said not to say that part…to keep it classy." He leaned toward Michael in his booster seat. "Heather says classy means proper, like respectable," he explained, "but why is a bar not classy? There's a bar at Morton's."

"The steakhouse downtown," Sara supplied absently, eyes still on her screen.

"Ah, some bars can be classy," Michael attempted. "But I guess some aren't? Respectable?" He noticed Sara kind of frown in the direction of her screen, and he tried again. "But I think mostly people just like to think they met somewhere interesting, not somewhere boring like a bar."

Mike seemed satisfied with this answer, and Michael was too busy patting himself on the back to anticipate the obvious follow-up question. "Where did you and Mom meet?"

This got Sara's eyes from her phone. She nearly dropped it. Michael froze, his fingers clenching the steering wheel. "Um…"

"I was your dad's doctor," Sara said matter-of-factly. Her voice sounded tight; hopefully Mike didn't notice.

"So you met at the clinic?"

"No, I didn't work there then. We both lived in Chicago, where we're from. But we met in my exam room, yes."

"What were you at the doctor for?" Mike asked Michael.

"Uh, a shot."

"Ugh," Mike commiserated. "Did you like Mom right away? Maddy, in Mr. House's class, says when you like someone, you know it right away."

Sara laughed. "Mike. Honestly. Where is this coming from?" To Michael she added, "Maddy's a 3rd grader, so she's very worldly." She shook her head.

"I did like her right away," Michael answered. He glanced in the mirror again. "I didn't expect my doctor to be so smart. Or so pretty."

Sara made a _hmph_ noise. Mike said, "Maddy says you can kiss a girl on your second date, but not your first. Did you kiss Mom on your second date?"

"Well, we didn't really date…"

Sara silenced him with a look. "You do not have to answer these questions," she told him incredulously. To Mike, she said firmly, "Maddy does _not_ know what she's talking about."

Mike, per usual when he'd locked in on a subject, wasn't to be dissuaded. "The second time you saw her, then."

Michael smiled and played along. It was kind of fun to see Sara so flustered. "Well, I might have _wanted_ to, but I knew she wouldn't have let me."

This made Mike smile. "She'd say no way?"

Michael laughed while Sara frowned. "She'd say No. _Way._ "

"Why Mom?"

Sara looked ready to shut this down. "I was at work, Mike. You want Mom to kiss all the patients at work? Honestly," she repeated.

Mike seemed to enjoy riling her up, too. "But it was my _dad_ ," he protested, giggling at his own silliness. Or maybe at the general concept of kissing, Michael wasn't sure. "You were going to let him kiss you eventually."

"Yeah, Sara," Michael agreed."You were going to let me kiss you eventually," He grinned at her.

"And then what did you think, Mom?" Mike wanted to know.

Michael darted a look at her sideways to catch her expression. She'd finally given into a smile. "I thought…oh my god, am I in trouble now."

She caught Michael's eye, and they both cracked up at the same time. Mike joined in just because, laughing with them from the backseat.

* * *

That night, Michael tucked Mike into bed without issue. He slipped into bed next to Sara, who he noted wore the slippery silk thing he loved quite a lot. He rolled over to her, running his hands up her torso to feel the material roll up and away from her skin. She smiled at his touch, but then captured his hands and pulled him back gently.

He leaned up on one elbow to study her face. Maybe she felt sore from that morning. They _had_ been a little rough with each other. "Not up to it?" He kept his tone light.

"It's not that." She hesitated, looking uncomfortable. "But there's something you should know."

His stomach did a queasy little flip at the look on her face, but what she said was completely unexpected.

"I, um, am not…well, the bottom line is, we've been having unprotected sex." She glanced at him, obviously trying to decipher his thoughts on this. He wasn't sure how he felt…to be honest, he was still wrapping his mind around how to be a father to Mike. "I'm very sorry," Sara continued, when he didn't answer. "It's unforgivable of me not to say, and I kept meaning to, but then we…and I guess I kept getting sidetracked."

Was she upset? He couldn't tell. "How do _you_ feel about it?"

She released a nervous laugh. "Actually, oddly okay with it, I think?"

Gladness sluiced through Michael, surprising him. It warmed him right to his toes. She misjudged his expression. "You're shocked," she said, with some dismay. "You're right, I'm not thinking straight. It's just that uh, at the time of the exoneration, I felt sure it was a very safe time for me. But today…I'm not so confident about that."

He toyed with the lacy hem on her night shirt. "You're usually so careful about these things."

She raised both eyebrows. "Our son wasn't exactly planned, Michael. I'm _not_ careful, when it comes to you. Remember?"

He smiled. "This is not just on you," he reminded her. "I should have asked you if I needed to use anything. I just assumed you…had it taken care of."

"I haven't been on birth control for quite a while." She said this to the ceiling.

"Oh," he said. "Alright." Then something occurred to him against his will, and all the previous warmth he'd felt dissipated as quickly as if he'd been doused in ice water. "Do you mean…were you…trying to…with…" The words refused to form on his tongue.

She looked confused, then aghast. "God, no. Michael, no." She sighed. "I know you don't want to hear this, and I don't really want to talk about it either, but, let's just say birth control hadn't been a necessity for some time."

"Oh," he said again. Because what else could he say? Thank God?

She exhaled, like she needed to rid herself of something, then rolled over resolutely to face him again. "But I'll get myself a scrip, and in the meantime, maybe…" She trailed a finger down his arm, obviously torn.

"Maybe we just let what will be, be?" He raised an eyebrow at her, and she grinned at him as he rolled on top of her. "I've missed enough time with you already," he said. "I'm not willing to waste any more, if you're good with that." She nodded, and he felt the silk of her gown slide upward between their bodies as she lifted her head to bring her lips to his.


	7. Chapter 7

Week 4

The family therapist Sara found had a bunch of fancy credentials after her name, but insisted Mike call her Dr. Kate. She shook his hand first, adjusting her jovial greeting to match his solemnity at meeting a new person. Watching the interaction, Michael had to give her credit for knowing what she was doing. They talked all together first, in a living room sort of configuration he figured was supposed to feel non-threatening or familiar.

Dr. Kate began by asking Mike how school was going. "My dad picks me up now," he supplied. A box of toys sat on the side of the couch, and he began piecing together LEGOs.

"And how's that going?" she asked.

He searched the box until he found a flat foundational base, then fitted a series of blocks on top of it. "Mom already asked me about that. I said 'good'."

Dr. Kate didn't give him a pass. "It must be weird though, right? Your dad back, after hearing so much about him all your life?"

Mike pondered this. His jaw clenched slightly the way Sara's did when she felt tense. "He _is_ super important," he finally conceded.

"Who? Your dad?"

"Yeah."

Michael started to contradict this, but Kate silenced him with a hand. Mike didn't notice, looking carefully at Sara over the top of his LEGOs, which now formed a tower. "Especially to my mom."

Sara leaned forward toward him. Michael didn't know why she was allowed to interject, when he wasn't. "You're super important to me too, baby," she protested. " _So_ important."

He flicked a finger against his LEGO tower to test its strength. It held. "I know," he said softly. "And now you don't look sad sometimes."

"I didn't used to look sad," Sara said swiftly, and this time, Dr. Kate tried to shush her as well. "Not in front of Mike," she amended, directing this toward the other adults.

"You did," Mike corrected blandly. "Lots. But not anymore," He offered Michael a shy smile, which he returned around a lump in his throat, his eyes locked on his son's.

After Kate released Mike to finish his LEGO building in the room next door, she closed the door softly. "Okay you two," she said, sinking back down into her chair. "I thought during this first session, we'd start at the beginning, and see where it leads us. Sound good?"

"The beginning?" Michael probed.

Kate glanced at her note pad on her lap. "Yes, which for you would be…Fox River?"

Sara frowned. "Shouldn't we talk about Mike? How he's doing?"

"Yes," Michael agreed. "Fox River is old news."

"Not to me," Kate said mildly. "And sometimes, re-establishing the known can shake new things loose. For instance, Michael: how did you feel about Sara, while you were in Fox River?" Michael glanced toward Sara, but Kate called his attention back. "Don't look to her, Michael. Just say what comes to your mind first."

He wasn't sure what she wanted, so he decided to cut straight to the chase. "I fell in love with her in Fox River," he said simply, forcing himself to keep his eyes forward. "So I suppose I felt…positively." Without looking at her, he could sense Sara's slight smile.

"And you, Sara? How did you feel?"

"He knows how I felt," she said softly. "Too positively for my own good."

"What do you mean by that?"

"He knows," she repeated. She didn't look very happy to be here now, answering this line of questioning. Michael was tempted to remind her this whole thing had been her idea. She cupped her chin with one hand and looked steadily out Kate's floor-to-ceiling window; he followed her gaze to the Japanese maple swaying in the breeze on the other side of the glass.

Kate seemed to get the gist, because she asked the right follow-up. "And how did you feel after he escaped? One word."

Sara continued to stare outside. "Betrayed. Angry. Foolish. Devastated."

"Okay, that's four." She kept her face passive, but Michael could tell the therapist felt pleased with herself, finding such a rich vein to tap. In that moment, he disliked the woman deeply. "Did it ever occur to you that you didn't _have_ to feel these things? That when Michael told you he planned to escape with his brother, you could have simply blown the whistle?"

Sara lifted her head from her hand. She blinked like she was just waking up. "What, report him? No." She resumed her study of the window. "Never."

Kate leaned forward to keep her attention. "Then what made you take the morphine that night, Sara? Guilt?"

Sara tensed in her chair, which had Michael itching to rise to her defense. He knew how much she hated talking about this part. "No, not guilt."

"What then?"

She fell silent for a while. Michael felt torn: he wanted to hear her answer, but also wanted her released from reliving this. "The idea that he used me…that it had all been a lie…I needed to not feel the crush of that." She forced a sigh. "It was that simple."

She looked so resigned as she said this, suddenly so weary, Michael heard himself hiss, "She doesn't need to talk about this." Did this woman think they'd never scrutinized all this before? Hadn't tortured themselves enough? "She already said…I know all this. I already _feel_ all this."

Kate said, "Sometimes, there are cycles of behavior that can be discovered when you analyze…"

Sara turned from the window. "Like being lied to?"

Michael looked away from the raw pain in her eyes. "Sara. This time…this whole lie? It was for you." This too, she already knew.

She leaned toward him, forgetting the therapist. He noted her hands tangling into the hem of her sleeve, such a painfully familiar nervous tic. "I get that Michael, I really do, but here's what I don't understand: why couldn't it have been _our_ lie? Why does it always have to be Michael Scofield against the world?" He opened his mouth mutely, no answer forthcoming, but she didn't wait to hear one anyway. "Because being kept in the dark all this time? It felt like Fox River all over again. And that's _not_ a good feeling."

"You wanted me to tell you," he realized slowly. "When I was first contacted? When you were pregnant and we were still together?"

"Yes. Of course I did, Michael." She raked her hands through her hair. "Why couldn't we have figured out what to do _together?_ "

"Faked my death together?" He leaned forward, forcing himself to stare down the hurt on Sara's face. It was formidable. "That would never have worked, sweetheart." He held his hand out to her across the couch, and waited for her to take it. She sat stubbornly for only a moment before yielding. Her fingers felt cool in his. "We never could have sold that." He rubbed the pad of his thumb softly over her knuckle. They both completely ignored Kate watching them.

"Why not? I could have—"

He let out a hard laugh. "Even as it was, I couldn't leave you alone," he said. "If we'd both known—"

"What do you mean, couldn't leave me alone?" Sara asked sharply. "You mean the cranes in the gutter?"

He bit his lip. He'd meant the zoo. And all the other times he'd taken a terrible chance just for a glimpse of her and their son before he'd been locked up in Yemen.

She pinned him with her gaze. "Michael."

"I had to see you sometimes," he admitted wretchedly. He gripped her fingers more tightly. Willed her to stay with him right now. "I had to lay eyes on Mike."

"Where?" she breathed. She returned the squeeze of his hand.

"The zoo," he admitted. "Mostly."

Her face froze, her fingers pulling from his reflectively to curl into a fist. Did she want to _hit_ him? He couldn't rule it out. He faced her miserably. "You were…that _close_?" she whispered. "All I had to do was _turn around?_ "

He understood the horrific frustration of this, he really did, but…"Sara. Say you had. And let's say we got away with it, in the zoo, in front of the aviary or at the primate habitat or anywhere else. Okay?" He lay his hand back on top of hers, covering her fist like paper over rock. He looked straight into her eyes, willing her to let him walk her through his logic. "Then what? We're content with that? We can walk away from each other?" He shook his head. He'd thought this through so many times. Tried so hard to find a loophole. There had been none. "So then what? We make plans. We meet up again. Maybe we're even really careful. But not forever, Sara. Eventually they catch us. Okay? There's no way they don't. And you're back in prison in what? Days? Hours, maybe. And where's Mike? Sure as hell not anywhere we want him. In some foster home with dark closets and…" he spit out an curse. "Do you really think I'd do that to him? Pull him from his mother? Do you think I'd take _Mike_ from _you_? Never."

Her hand had relaxed beneath his grasp, and she let out a long, slow breath. "You're right," she said eventually. Tears of anger rolled down her face. "And I _hate_ that you're right. It's just what they do," she told Kate forcefully, who gaped at them. "They keep coming, from every angle."

She sat rigid on the couch, and abruptly, Michael thought of the scars that laced her back. They were nothing, _nothing_ compared to what damage lay beneath…for both of them. She had been right to bring them here. He felt ashamed at having fought her on it. At having been uncooperative. "But not anymore," he said softly.

Sara closed her eyes, but the tears made their way around her eyelids. "I guess not."

She guessed? "It's over, Sara. Really."

"I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop," she admitted softly.

"And that's a reasonable response," Kate interjected. This time, it was Michael who silenced _her_ with a look.

"We have to have faith," he told Sara.

"And is that still enough for you?" she asked him.

He looked at her, looking at him for answers, grasping for any lifeline, and felt the weight of her happiness on his shoulders, as he so often did. He knew she didn't intend for him to carry it, but how could he not? Had he not walked into her life, she'd be in Chicago right now, her father would be alive, she'd have a job she liked and be making her way in the world. "It has to be," he told her. "It has to be enough for all of us."

* * *

Over her coffee cup at breakfast, Sara said, "Maybe we should go to Chicago this November."

Michael paused by the fridge. "I kind of promised Mike somewhere warm, where he could still try surfing lessons, remember?"

She thought about this. "Maybe a stopover, then. Before heading somewhere south?"

He paused, slicing a banana for Mike, still upstairs. "Do you miss it? The city?"

Honestly, she wasn't sure. She hadn't allowed herself to think about her life in Chicago for some time. "I thought maybe we should check on your loft," she said.

He looked at her quizzically. "I don't need to," he said. "We can simply sell it, or maybe rent it out. Make some income from it."

"I want to see it first," she said again. She wasn't sure why it mattered to her, but it did. She could have gone when she'd been in possession of the property, of course, but it had seemed wrong somehow, to peek into this part of Michael's life pre-Fox River. Like it didn't belong to her, no matter what the property deed said. With him with her, it felt different.

"Alright," he agreed easily. "We'll stop in Chicago. Spend a few days. Take Mike to the Field Museum and Millennium Park." He looked at her like she held the answer key to a quiz. "Would that be good?"

She forced a smile, wanting to reassure him that there were no wrong answers. But inwardly, she tried to picture it. Could she handle bringing her family to Chicago, where _her_ pre-Fox River life still lingered in the shadows, too? "I think so, yes. Thank you."

He squeezed her shoulder as Mike trotted down the stairs, then set out his favorite breakfast, down to the orange juice he liked without pulp. He already had Mike's favorite foods down cold, Sara noted, another test Michael had evidently studied for, determined to pass. Sometimes, if she was honest, Sara had to shake the feeling of their whole lives here being analyzed, compiled on a new dossier in Michael's brain. He dropped gracefully into the chair next to her as Mike started eating.

"How is the job search going?" she asked. It didn't really matter to her if he worked, but she knew it mattered to Michael.

He was slow to answer. "There's really nothing in Ithaca."

Sara had thought of this. She loved her job at the clinic, it had been exactly what she'd needed when she needed it, but there was very little for Michel here. Next to her, Mike swallowed a bite of cereal and asked, "What kind of job do you want, Dad?"

"Probably an engineering job," he told him. "A long time ago, I worked for a team of architects, and I really liked it."

Mike pondered this. "An architect builds houses and skyscrapers," he noted. "So what does an engineer do? Build engines?"

Michael pushed the tumbler of juice toward Mike to encourage him to finish breakfast. It was such a parent-like thing to do, Sara suppressed a smile. She wished he could see himself as she did: a natural at being Mike's father, at being her husband. He didn't need whatever research and facts and figures swam in his head. "No," he told Mike now, "an engineer solves problems. Figures out the best _way_ to build things."

"Like puzzles?"

"Yes, sort of."

"Okay. I want to be an engineer, too."

Sara smiled. "Of course you do." She pat him on the head as she got up from the table. She needed to get ready for work.

"What did you do after being an engineer for the architect?" Mike asked.

Sara saw Michael pause, then toy with the handle of his coffee mug. "I worked on other puzzles for a while."

"When you were away from us?" Mike said this around another bite of cereal, and Sara said sharply (too sharply, perhaps):

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Mike."

He looked a little hurt at her tone, and she sighed in frustration. "I really have go," she said. She looked imploringly at Michael.

He rose and kissed her cheek. "Go. I've got this," he said softly. She assessed him, and he really did seem in control of the situation. To Mike he said, "Yes, when I was away, when I had to be away even though I wanted to be here," he emphasized, "I had to solve puzzles for other people. Now, I want to solve them for us. But mostly, I want to take you to school before Mrs. A has to give you a tardy slip." He raised a eyebrow at Mike, who shoveled in a few more bites of breakfast.

He smiled at Sara, shooing her out the door. "We're right behind you," he said. The last thing she heard as she walked out the door was Mike asking if engineers have time in the afternoons to pick up their kids school each day.

"This one does," Michael told him definitively.

* * *

"Right here?" Michael asked Mike, moving to turn his blinker on.

Mike leaned forward to study the road in front of them. "No, the next one."

They turned at the entrance of the outpatient clinic, and Michael parked where Mike pointed, in front of the medical office. Inside, the buxom receptionist at the front desk greeted Mike with a high five and a lollipop from a dish on the counter. "Good timing," she said, smiling at them both. "Your mom is just finishing up with her last patient of the day. You want to wait in her office?"

"Uh huh," Mike said, and led the way down the hallway behind the counter. Michael followed, offering a quick wave of thanks to the woman. The county clinic employed three medical doctors and one psychiatrist, and Mike passed two closed doors before pushing open the one marked with a metal name plaque reading _Dr. Scofield, Internist._ Michael smiled.

Mike noticed. "An internist can be a general doctor or a special, I mean specialist doctor," he told Michael. "Mom is a general one, so she can help with lots of problems." Michael nodded as Mike pushed open the door. Sara's office, predictably, was devoid of clutter. "Sometimes she works at the hospital too, when someone has to go there for taking too many drugs. The bad-for-you kind."

Mike plopped himself down in the swivel chair at the desk, and spun himself around. Michael stood near the door, taking in the framed photo of Mike on the shelf by Sara's Northwestern diploma and medical license. It made his heart feel full. She really did get it all back, one piece at a time. His eye snagged a spot of red, and he moved toward the cabinet over the desk to study her origami rose set in front of a line of cardboard patient files. He touched a finger to the glass. Mike turned on the desktop computer, his face lighting up in the glow of the screen in the dim room. "Are you supposed to be…" Michael started, then stopped when he saw he'd opened a folder named MIKE, the contents all games for him to play.

"I do it all the time," Mike confirmed. He began a game with math questions and rockets, and Michael watched for a moment until the door opened. Sara walked though in her white medical lab coat, stethoscope around her neck, a patient chart tucked under one arm. "Hey," she said happily, but Michael simply stared.

He supposed he should have expected this, but the sight of her in full doctor mode caught him completely off-guard. He gaped at her. "Hi," he breathed. _I'm Michael, by the way,_ his head echoed. God, he was right back in Fox River. Suddenly, she was once again tantalizing, intriguing, and completely unattainable. She looked at him oddly, then flicked a strand of hair back over her shoulder before turning from him to file the chart. The gesture, so familiar, sent a swift and powerful ache to his groin. He suddenly wanted to grab her and kiss her and tear that coat right from her body. He gulped a breath instead, and turned back toward the rocket ship game on the screen in an attempt to pull himself together.

"You okay?" she asked him, shrugging out of the coat. "Mike got you here alright?"

He nodded, watching her hang it up behind the door in way too civilized a manner. Suddenly, he saw recognition click in her eyes. She paused, the jacket still in her hands, then leaned into him. "This doing something for you?" she whispered incredulously, her lip twitching upward. Her hair fell forward over her face, and it was all he could do not to rake his hands through it, brush it back, and tuck it behind her ear.

"It always has," he breathed. His voice sounded odd to him. Husky. He watched her swallow.

"Mike," she said, her eyes never leaving Michael's face. "Will you go ask Denise if my nine am is confirmed tomorrow?"

Mike glanced up from the screen and reached for the phone. "We can just ask her on the intercom thing," he said.

"Please? Now?" Michael bit back a smile, watching her beg. Mike shrugged, and darted out the door.

Michael was on her the second Mike's feet disappeared down the hall, his mouth hard on hers, his hands sliding up to her stomach. The sight of the stethoscope still around her neck sent a new wave of blood south as he pinned her against him. She moaned softly, and yet another wave followed the last. He nearly growled into her neck. "How long do we have?"

"Maybe ten?" she gasped. "Seconds, I mean."

He laughed ruefully, but made use of them, his fingers digging into the skin at her waist in frustration as they heard Mike's footsteps padding back. He was skipping.

Sara pushed Michael's body off hers. "Maybe go stand over there," she gasped, then turned away to shut down the computer as Mike bound back in.

"She said she already told you," he accused. "Confirmed."

"Thanks baby," Sara answered, her voice a bit shaky. "I must have forgotten." She straightened, tucked her ID in her purse, and headed out the door. Mike and Michael followed. "Ready for dinner?"

* * *

She'd had every intention of picking up where they'd left off in her office later that night, but by the time Sara lay down in bed, her head hurt from the long day and she felt herself fading. When Michael climbed in next to her a few minutes later, her eyes had already closed. She felt his lips on her cheek and nose, brushing light kisses against her skin. She smiled, but didn't move. He nudged a knee playfully between her legs in request, and she rolled onto her back lazily to cradle him between her hips. "Not happening," she said sleepily.

"Okay," he said agreeably, but he continued to kiss her softly. He rotated his pelvis in slow circles against hers.

"Michael. I'm serious."

"Give me five minutes? If you're still not interested, I'll leave you alone. Promise."

She rolled her eyes, or would have, had she opened them. "Five minutes," she agreed sleepily.

She felt him smile against her jaw. His kisses dropped to her neck and the back of her ear, and the rhythm of his hips continued in lazy arcs. It felt good, but she wasn't going to admit it. He was already very hard, but she resisted the urge to grind upward against him. Mostly. She felt him smile against her skin again.

"Don't be smug," she whispered. "That's just biology."

"Mmmhmm." She felt the vibration of his voice against her breast. He cupped her, then his mouth closed over a nipple. She met his next slow thrust of his hips with one of her own, but he didn't pick up speed. If anything, he slowed down, stilling his body to a very gentle rocking motion. This made her open her eyes in frustration. He glanced up at her sideways from her chest, then let his tongue slide lazily back over her raised nipple. _Dammit._ She was losing this battle.

He rocked into her one more agonizingly tender time, then rolled off of her entirely. She barely bit back her protest. "Alright," he said, "You can sleep."

She sat up on one elbow, narrowing her eyes at him.

He kissed her mouth softly, letting his tongue linger on her lower lip. "You said you weren't interested."

She laid back down on her back. "That's right," she said. She tried to hide her smile.

Very deliberately, Michael ran one hand down her body, over her chest and along her belly, then continued downward until two fingers stroked her between her legs. She knew what he'd find there…the silk of her underwear was more than damp. He feigned confusion. "But you _seem_ interested," he whispered. He slid himself down her body, until his mouth settled on the curve of her stomach, below her belly button. He let his tongue flick at her skin again. Her hips arched upward toward him of their own accord, betraying her.

"You win," she whispered.

"What's that?" he teased.

 _God, just fuck me already,_ she thought. She said, "Or not. Whatever."

His breath tickled her as he slid her underwear off. "It doesn't seem like you mean that." His eyes flicked back up to her, seeking and finding permission in her face. He dipped his head to taste her, very lightly, with his tongue. She bucked up into him a bit wildly, and he grasped her hips firmly, holding her still against the bed. He grazed his mouth over her again with incredible discipline; she felt only the tip of his wet tongue as he let it slide across her.

"God damn it," she groaned. "You do not play fair."

She felt another smile, which she tried again to arch into, in vain. He pinned her against the mattress for another slow, tantalizing flick of tongue. She nearly wept.

He moved from between her legs to kiss her inner thighs, one side, then the other, while she tried not to squirm. He laid his head against her knee. "You know, I'm feeling a little tired now myself," he said, lips against her thigh.

"Michael," she whimpered. "Please."

He nipped at her skin. "Please what?" He let his fingers stroke with featherlight touch against the dip in the uppermost part of her thigh, a millimeter from where she wanted them. His voice sounded the way it had in her office. Rough around the edges.

" _Please_ use your mouth on me." She rolled her hips toward him again, beyond caring about telegraphing her need.

He still took his time, running his hands up her first, parting her with his thumb. He stroked her twice more, each time sending a violent quiver from between her legs to twist achingly in her belly. He brought his hand to his mouth to taste her there, and she nearly spasmed with want. His head dipped down again, and finally, his mouth opened against her in earnest, his tongue devouring her. She gasped, grinding into him, her hips rising from the sheet despite his attempt to hold her at bay. She felt him groan in response, the sound vibrating in her, and she didn't last a minute. She came hard against his mouth, biting back a cry she knew would wake their son.

He lifted his face to look at her, his expression almost awed, despite the fact that he'd been the one to work wonders. She ran a hand over his scalp, and he slid up her body to settle against her. She could feel his desire for her, hard against her skin, and she rolled them both over, bringing him back into the cradle of her hips. He sank into her with a shudder of relief, his face buried in her neck.

He started slowly again, waiting for her to catch back up to him, though she could tell it cost him. She met each arc of his body with her hips, gripping him tightly around her. She felt swollen and raw and spent, and he moved as languidly as he could, giving her the full length of him with each careful thrust. She felt the hum of pleasure start to build again, and closed her eyes, floating on the sensation, until she opened them to see the intense look on his face.

"Don't be a hero," she whispered. "I am beyond satisfied, Michael."

He smiled down at her, but didn't change his rhythm. "Ladies first," he said. "Or rather, ladies again."

She couldn't argue with that, but she _could_ grab his hips and urge him harder and faster, locking her legs around him. He tried to resist her new pace, but failed quickly. "You do that, and this will be over very soon," he gasped.

"Shh," she said. "I'm with you." Something in her face convinced him, and she gripped his shoulders as he turned it on. The abandon to which he now surrendered had pleasure sluicing through her in response; his muscles shook with unrestrained need, his breath came hard and fast in her ear. His face bent into the crook of her neck as he lost himself in her over and over, until he groaned her name, sliding a hand between them to touch her, ensuring she came again with him.

They both gulped air for a few seconds while their heart rates gradually dropped to normal. Michael nestled back against her, both their bodies slick with sweat.

"Maybe a shower?" she suggested, pushing the sheet away from her skin.

Michael exhaled against her breast. "We may never get any sleep if we do," he acknowledged.

"Sleep's overrated," she said.

"Like toes?" he breathed.

She laughed lightly into her pillow. "Like toes."


	8. Chapter 8

Sara left for her weekly NA meeting just before 7 pm, leaving Michael to finish the school night bedtime routine. She hadn't been gone five minutes before Mike donned his jacket and bike helmet. "I'm going to Dylan's," he told Michael matter-of-factly.

Michael looked up from the professional engineering listings he'd been perusing in surprise. He knew Dylan was Heather and Larry's kid, but what on earth made Mike think he could ride over there at this time of evening? "Not now," he said with equal certainty.

Mike stared him down, helmet already snapped below his chin. "Why not? He has a new Wii game. He told me I could come try it, at school today."

Michael shut the laptop. Was he serious? "He'll still have it tomorrow," he said. He gave Mike a smile.

It wasn't returned. "It won't be new tomorrow."

Michael frowned. "That may be true, but it's a school night, and bedtime is 8:00. It's almost time for you to take your bath. You know that."

"Mom wouldn't care."

"Ha," Michael answered. "Right."

Mike simply continued to stare him down. He must really, really want to play this game. With a sinking feeling, Michael realized he may be out of his depth tonight. It made him feel off-balance; he and Mike had been cruising along so nicely. He grasped at a tactic he'd been given in their group therapy sessions: validation. "What do you do, in this game?" he asked. Mike perked up, obviously taking this question as a point in his favor. He described it in detail. "Sounds interesting," Michael agreed. "I understand why you're looking forward to playing it."

"So I can go?" Mike moved toward the door again.

"No, like I said, maybe tomorrow. After school. You don't have anything after school on Wednesdays."

Mike didn't like this answer at all. Finally, the gauntlet was dropped. "You're not in charge of me anyway," he decided. He turned back toward the door.

Michael sat stunned for a second. The hell he wasn't. "Go to your room," he heard himself say. God, had he heard that on a sitcom or something?

Mike looked a little shocked, but held his ground. "You can't tell me what to do," he whispered. He seemed to regret saying this the second the words left his mouth.

Michael stood, anger rising. "I just did."

Mike wavered in indecision, weighing his options, and must have come to the conclusion that he had none. He stomped up the stairs with a low grumble in his throat. "Take your bath," Michael managed to command, before sinking back down on the sofa, completely spent. What was _that_ about?He was still sitting there, not hearing bathwater running, when Sara returned early at 7:45.

She looked at him, just sitting there, and said, "Where's Mike?"

"His room," Michael said slowly.

"Already in bed?" Sara asked, setting her purse down. "Wow. 15 minutes early. I'm impressed." She smiled, but when Michael said nothing, she looked at him more closely. "He _is_ in bed, right?"

Michael shook his head. "Just…in his room."

"Why?"

This simple question seemed daunting to answer. He still felt a little stunned. "I think I put him there." Had he messed up? Or rather, how badly? "He was _not_ behaving."

Sara sat down beside him. "Okay. Well, that will happen, you know."

It had never happened to Michael. Apart from his single tantrum about Panama, Mike was always so…so…perfect. He told Sara what had transpired, and she sighed. "He's used to only answering to me, it's true, but that's changed now, and he's going to have to get used to it."

"I hated saying no to him," Michael admitted. "And knowing he's angry with me…" The knowledge that he'd been willing to cause any sort of division between himself and his son after working so hard to build a bridge tore at his gut.

She nodded. "But you had to do it," she reminded him. She bumped his shoulder with her own. "This is the part that's not in the framed photos of birthday cakes, beach days, and pony rides, right?"

He offered her a pained smile. "Right. I think I get that now."

Sara looked thoughtful. "You know, it might be a good sign…that he feels comfortable enough with you to act up. They say that, anyway, about kids…they test you because they want to know that you care enough to punish them."

She sounded like a text book. "Who says that, exactly?"

Sara looked faintly embarrassed. " You know…'they'. The mysterious they of parenting books."

"Which you never read, because you find them worthless?" He smiled at her. He'd already scanned the numerous titles in the bookcase in the office.

She couldn't deny it. "You know you're going to have to go finish this, right? Follow through?"

He glanced up the stairs, like maybe Mike would appear there, freshly bathed and pajama-clad, ready with a heartfelt apology. When no such vision appeared, Michael rose from the couch. "Yeah, alright." He walked upstairs almost as reluctantly as Mike had. At his room, he eyed the lump under the Star Wars comforter that was his son, thought about Sara's explanation of rules equating to parental love, took a deep breath, and said simply, "Bath. Let's go."

The cover flew back, and Mike's face appeared. "I'm not dirty." He looked at Michael's determined expression and changed his tune. "But I guess I could rinse off."

Michael ran the bathwater and sat down on the toilet lid after Mike stepped into the tub. "Did I hear Mom come home?" Mike asked.

"Yep," Michael confirmed.

Mike looked up hopefully from the water. "Is she coming up here?"

"Nope." Watching Mike's small shoulders slump slightly, he yielded somewhat. "She'll come up to say goodnight, of course. Now, wash up, Mike."

Mike watched the path his fingers made, gliding underwater. "Just soap but not hair?" he asked.

Michael smiled at him thinly. "Sure, alright."

Mike picked up the soap bar and rolled it over his arm, then let it dive bomb into the water. "Maybe," he ventured experimentally, "Maybe you're in charge sometimes?"

Michael nearly caved when his son's eyes, so like Sara's, met his. "I'm not a babysitter, Mike. I'm your father. That means I'm in charge all the time, same as Mom."

He considered this while trying to retrieve the soap in the water. "But you do what Mom says?"

Michael tried not to smile again. "Your mom may be the expert on you, Mike, but I have news, my friend. I'm a fast learner." Mike actually giggled at this, and Michael reveled in the sound. "We'll figure this out," he said softly, "you and me. But you need to understand something, Mike." He waited until those hazel eyes landed back on him. "When I tell you to do something, you do it, or there will be consequences, just like with Mom."

Mike nodded quietly. "Yes, Dad."

Michael stopped himself from outwardly celebrating this victory. "Alright then. Wash up for real now. It's late." He held up a towel, and after a few minutes of scrubbing, Mike stepped into it. Michael wrapped it around his small body, absorbing the warmth of his wet skin through the material. Somehow, inside the terrycloth, Mike felt fragile as a bird in his arms. Damn, this fatherhood thing was intense. No wonder so many experts tried to weigh in on it. He forced his voice to remain authoritative. "Alright. Teeth. Pajamas. Bed."

"Don't forget story," Mike objected. "We haven't finished the solar system book." He talked around his toothbrush.

Michael nodded. "Alright. solar system book, then bed. You've got a deal."

* * *

They landed at O'Hare at 7 pm local time in the midst of a freak early season snowstorm. By the time they'd emerged through baggage claim, the snow fell in fat, heavy flakes that blocked out the glow of the streetlights outside. "Guess it's good we're staying in Chicago a few days," Michael said, noting the departures board, now showing mostly delays in red. Sara nodded.

Knowing the streets would be clogged with traffic, they took the Blue Line into downtown, Mike curled up between them on the bench seat of the train. He was sleepy; Sara knew it felt an hour later to all of them. "I only packed his fall jacket," she said to Michael, over Mike's head. "And I don't know what bag it's in right now."

By the time they arrived at their stop on River North, Mike had nodded off against Michael's shoulder. He shrugged out of his own jacket and handed it to Sara as he hefted Mike into his arms. "Put it over him, please?" he requested.

Sara walked a few steps behind him as they navigated the two blocks down Kinzie to the Westin, Mike just a lump of coat in Michael's arms. She knew how heavy he felt when asleep…completely dead weight. "Okay?" she called to Michael after the first block, when he paused to adjust the overnight bad slung over one shoulder. He had to be freezing in his shirt sleeves.

He turned in the snow to give her a smile. "I'm great." Something about the juxtaposition of Michael here in Chicago, in street clothes, carrying their son through the snow against her previous image of him in Fox River blue and gray, sent an intense jolt to her heart.

The lobby of the Westin was crowded with an overall chaos of stranded travelers, bellboys dripping snow from their heavy wool uniforms, and cab and Uber drivers warming themselves by the sleek modern fireplace. Mike stirred in Michael's arms. "Is it still snowing?"

"Sure is," Michael told him as he lowered him down to the ground. He stretched his arms experimentally; they must ache. Mike spotted chocolate chip cookies on a tray by the check-in counter, and looked to Michael expectantly. Sara felt a quick thrill to the sight: all their effort to reinforce Michael as an authoritative parent, equal in Mike's estimation to Sara, had been paying off. "Yeah, go ahead," Michael told him.

On the 19th floor, their room offered views of the river, and Sara stood there for some time while Michael tucked Mike into the master bed on the other end of the room; they'd move him later. She was still watching the snow drift between the bridges and high rises when he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her torso. He drew her back against him, and she felt a shiver of contentment.

"I haven't seen this city in seven years," he said into the curve of her neck.

"Me neither. God, I've missed it. I had no idea."

He kissed her cheek, then released her. "I'm going to order us something from room service before the kitchen closes." She nodded, still watching the river. When their food arrived, she walked across the room to the small table where Michael sat pouring Perrier into two glasses. She froze at the sight of their meal.

"You're going to make me cry," she said softly.

He looked up at her, his mouth crooking into a smile. "As if I'd order you anything else."

She sank down into her chair, her eyes still on the filet mignon gracing each plate. It smelled amazing, but she truly wasn't sure if she could bring herself to cut into it. The promise of this meal had kept her going for so long. Michael raised his glass to her while reaching for her hand across the table. She took it. "To Chicago," he said quietly.

She let her glass clink against his gently, so as not to wake their son. "To us," she added.

* * *

The next morning, the snow had let up, leaving the city covered in white. They bought Mike a heavier jacket in the overpriced boutique off the hotel lobby, and set out for the Field Museum. "I remember coming here for a field trip in 4th grade," Michael said as they stepped into the cavernous exhibit hall. "I loved it."

"We had annual passes," Sara remembered.

"Of course you did." Michael rolled his eyes at her, but she just laughed. Sara was in a very good mood, he noted. Mike had gravitated to the full-scale T-Rex skeleton, and for the next few hours, they followed him from room to room while he enthused over every exhibit. Afterward, they grabbed slices of pizza before taking the El uptown to the park. Michael glanced at his phone as Mike tromped through the snow, making snowballs and lobbing them at his parents. "Linc can meet us for dinner," he told Sara, "but LJ's out of town for a internship." This sentence sounded like such a normal thing to say, it made him smile.

They crossed Lake Shore Drive to see the lake. It was bitter cold, and Michael knew the wind that had picked up would be worse on the water. He reminded Sara of this. "I just want to see it for a minute," she insisted.

When they arrived at the walkway along the water, Michael pointed out the skyline view to Mike, and then they began skipping stones across the lake surface. It didn't work well; ripples had risen on the water to form tiny white peaks. When he looked over, Michael noticed Sara had gone quiet. She stood on the concrete steps overlooking the lake, a contemplative look on her face. "Here," he said to Mike. "Try mine." He gave him the best of the smooth stones he'd collected, and moved to join Sara.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded slowly, rocking back on her heels a bit in the wind. She'd stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. "I came here, that night," she said slowly. She stared out at the horizon. "The night you escaped. I stood right here, for a long time. Deciding."

"Oh," he breathed. He followed her gaze across the water, trying to relive what she'd lived. Feel what she'd felt. He knew what he'd gone through: panic rising in his gut as he'd paced his cell with Sucre looking on. A double-edged fear: would the doorknob refuse to turn when he tried it? Had he already shut the door on any chance with Sara? He swallowed, his eyes stinging from the cold.

Mike wormed his way in-between them then, tugging on Sara's arm. "It's freezing here," he said. She looked down at him, then leaned up to Michael to place a soft kiss against his temple.

"Thank God I made the right choice," she said simply. To Mike she added, "Let's go. I know where we can find hot cocoa."

By the time they met Lincoln outside Troquet, the restaurant Michael picked after recognizing the name of the head chef on Yelp, her earlier jovial mood had returned. Not for the first time, Michael marveled at her resilience. He watched her and his brother embrace.

"You look good," Linc told her, and she smiled at him. Their relationship had changed, Michael thought, in the past seven years. They were closer, but in the way of people who had gone through something difficult together: with a slight discomfort, as though each reminded the other of something they'd rather forget.

Lincoln hugged Michael hard, greeted Mike with a bear hug, then acknowledged Michael's dining choice with a grumble. "Why this fancy bistro shit? Pop's on West Side not good enough for you anymore?" He glanced down at Mike and gave him a wink. "Bleep out Uncle Lincoln's bad words as usual, kiddo."

Michael laughed. "You're in my Chicago now, bro." It was still bitterly cold out, and he thought of that awful afternoon, so long ago, when he'd stood on the sidewalk outside Linc's place and berated him for losing his keys. God, he'd been an asshole. He clapped a hand to his brother's back. "C'mon and try it. You might even enjoy it."

The meal was decent, but not as great as Michael had been expecting. Maybe the Chicago culinary scene had slipped a bit in the past few years. Or maybe he was a different person now, one who cared less about celebrity chefs and Zagat ratings. They'd finished dinner and were waiting for the chocolate torte Lincoln had so helpfully pointed out to Mike on the menu when Michael heard a hearty, "Michael Scofield, in the flesh?!"

He looked up to see one of his favorite ex-colleagues from his old firm. "Mark Jacobson? Are you kidding me?" He stood and shook his hand.

Mark rocked back on his heels in amazement. "Thought I'd seen the last of you, man." He looked around the table, his eye snagging on Lincoln, who he obviously recognized. From Fox River Eight news coverage, perhaps? He had the grace not to say so. "You back? In town?"

Michael looked at Sara. "Just a visit, this time," he said slowly. "This is my wife, Sara, my son, Mike, my brother, Lincoln." He introduced Mark as a friend from Middleton, Maxwell, and Schaum. "You still there?" he asked Mark.

Mark laughed. "I'm actually a partner now, believe it or not." He gestured to Michael, addressing the table at large. "Course, this guy would be running the place by now, if he hadn't left. You'd have Thompson's corner office."

Michael acknowledged this with a smile. "Don't know about that."

Mark laid a hand on his shoulder. "But seriously, if you do return to the city for good, drop me a line, will you? I'd love to have you back." Michael hesitated, and Mark misread this as some type of job-seeking strategy. "I'll more than match whatever you're making now. Guaranteed."

Michael looked at his old friend with a raised eyebrow. "I don't know if I'd be exactly welcomed back with open arms."

Mark laughed. "Are you kidding? You're like a legend there. I'd be a freaking hero." He slid his card across the table. "Anyway. Call me either way. Let's catch up."

"Sure thing," Michael said. He rose to shake Mark's hand again as he excused himself from the table.

* * *

The next day, the sky shone blue, and when Michael checked on their afternoon flight to Cabo San Lucas, it showed on-time. They had several hours to kill. "Ready to go check out the loft?" he asked Sara.

It was only a short walk across the river from the Westin, and a half an hour later, Michael turned the key in the lock and opened the door. It was just as he remembered it: shiny, sparse, and sleek, all steel, granite, and marble. The bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city caught Mike's eye, and he immediately ran across the living space, tracking mud the length of the immaculate room. Sara let out a yelp and chased him down to pull off his boots. Michael stood in the entryway, watching them struggle with outerwear, while a feeling of contentment he'd never actually felt while living here came over him so thoroughly, he could scarcely breathe. Sara turned from the windows, an apology on her lips, then paused.

"What is it?" she asked carefully.

He smiled at her. "It's just…seeing you both here." He wanted to join them, but just couldn't yet, somehow. "The last time I was in here, that window was completely covered with research," he remembered. Sara looked confused. "Blueprints, newspaper clippings, schematics…Beautiful Mind, style," he told her.

She smiled cautiously at him. The idea probably alarmed her, and now that he thought about it, his wall _had_ been alarming. Her photo accompanying the article about her work in India had been pinned right there, where Mike now stood counting the bridges visible over the Chicago River. The sight of his wife and child standing in the place of all that effort left him weak with gratitude. "Somehow," Michael said slowly, a simple truth dawning on him by degrees, "I didn't just get it all back. I got back far more than I ever started with."

A look crossed Sara's face. Love shone there, but laced with something more complicated. Hindsight, as she stared back at him? Thankfulness of her own? He went to them then, and wrapped his arms around both of them. After a moment, Mike wiggled under his arm, ready to explore the rest of the empty loft. Sara turned into him, holding him tightly. They stayed that way a while, at the window, until Mike returned, bored. "There's nothing else to do here," he observed.

Michael agreed. "Let's go learn to surf," he suggested, then laughed at Mike's whoop of agreement.

* * *

On the flight to Baja, Mike took the window seat, and Sara leaned her head on Michael's shoulder. "What did you think," he asked her, "about Chicago?"

She sighed. "I loved it. I think I'll always love that city."

Michael nodded. "But we can't live there," he ventured, then paused, giving her space to object. "Right?"

"No, you're right," she agreed after a moment. She lifted her head from his shoulder, thinking of the friend he'd run into at dinner. "Though you've said you liked your job there, and you could have that back."

"It wouldn't be the same," he said. "I realized last night I'm not the same person I was then. And I'll always be known as the mastermind of the Fox River Eight in that city," he added.

"And I'll always be known as the stupid female doctor who let you all out."

Michael objected to this description with a low growl, but surely he couldn't really argue. The events of the Fox River breakout loomed large in the local vernacular, as sensational stories always do. "And you love your job at the clinic," he noted.

"And unlike you, I don't think I could work in Chicago. Too many bridges burned." She imagined asking for her job back at Chicago General, and shuddered. "But what will you do, if we stay in Ithaca?"

He leaned back in his seat, hands braced together in front of his face, fingertips teepeed, as he did when giving something serious thought. She hadn't really expected him to have an answer, but he surprised her. "Actually, I may have a solution to that," he said. "But I want your opinion." For the next several minutes, he explained his idea, telling her he'd like to go back into structural engineering for himself, as a freelance consultant. How his email inbox was already cluttered with requests from everyone from tech firm CEOs to government sub-contractors to independent research facilities, all seeking his expertise in building security. "The CIA must sell their mailing lists to third parties," he said wryly.

"You want to specialize in keeping people _out_ of buildings?" she asked. She marveled at the poetry of this.

"Yes," he said. "No more prisons. I'm done breaking people out, even for the right reasons, or on the right side of the law."

She looked at him in wonder. "I love it," she said. And she did. She really did.

He smiled in relief. "I'd have to travel sometimes, but I could work from home otherwise. Be there for Mike every day. We could live anywhere you want."

She laid her head back on his shoulder and reached for his hand to thread her fingers through his. "I love it," she repeated softly.

* * *

Baja was exactly as Michael remembered it, and nothing like he remembered it. He found the cheap beer, but had less interest in drinking it, and the hammocks on the beach still existed, but he vastly preferred the king-sized bed in the master of their bungalow rental. They spent their days at the beach, playing in the cool water of the Pacific and lounging lazily on the sand. Michael and Mike made intricate sandcastles with moats and secret tunnels and roads they 'paved' with buckets of water from the surf, though the sight of Sara in her swimsuit often made it difficult for Michael to concentrate on educating their son on foundational strength and structural integrity.

Toward the end of their first afternoon, Michael finally dropped into the beach chair next to Sara, letting his feet burrow into the warm sand as Mike put the final touches on their latest creation. "Bring the road all the way around," Michael instructed with a wave of his hand, before closing his eyes, the warm sunshine glowing orange behind his eyelids.

"Promoting yourself to supervisor?" Sara asked with amusement.

"It's how the world works," he smiled, eyes still closed. "I have to teach him why it's best to be the boss, not the laborer."

After a few minutes, he heard Mike's gradual approach toward the beach chairs, digging as he went. Michael should have anticipated what happened next; in fact, he chastised himself for not anticipating it, later. Mike's plastic shovel sank into the sand repeatedly, each time a few inches closer to the chairs, until predictably, it hit pay dirt in the form of the flesh at the top of Michael's buried foot. His eyes flew open at the quick stab of pain. "Ah!" he cried, congratulating himself on not swearing.

"Sorry!" Mike responded immediately, and Michael was already telling him it was fine, the pain from the toy shovel already gone, when Mike's eyes suddenly widened and his face drained of color. _"Sorry!"_ he cried again, with twice the emphasis.

Michael looked down blankly at his foot, his three-toed one, which he'd liberated from the sand. _Oh._ Then, as Mike's reaction fully dawned: _Oh, shit._ It suddenly occurred to him that throughout the upstate New York fall, Michael hadn't been barefoot much. "No, Mike," he said in a rush. "It's alright."

The look on Mike's face would have been comical had he not been clearly gripped in terror at the thought of inflicting such an injury. He started to cry, his hands shaking as he clutched the shovel. Sara released a sound that seemed an odd cross between a laugh and a sob. "Mike, that happened a long time ago," she told him swiftly. "It's okay."

He still just stared at Michael's foot, while Michael stared at him, staring at it, until Sara guided Mike gently back by the shoulders to settle him against her lap. It was astounding, Michael thought with fatalistic resignation, how swiftly they could be yanked from idyllic tropical sunshine back into the past. He fought the futile desire to bury his toes back under the sand and out of sight.

"What happened to them?" Mike asked timidly, still looking at the space on Michael's foot where two toes should be. When Michael hesitated, he added, with a bit more confidence lacing his voice, "You won't lie to me, remember?"

Sara looked between them quizzically. "It's kind of a policy of ours," Michael told her.

"Guess I neglected to negotiate for that perk," she said quietly, but when Michael looked at her swiftly, her smile was tender. "I think I'll take a dip in the water," she decided, then rose gracefully to her feet, depositing a now overtly curious Mike into her vacated chair. Michael snagged her hand before she could walk away. "You've got this," she said softly, and then he was watching her long, lean legs carry her across the sand.

He tore his eyes away to redirect his attention on Mike. He didn't want to tell him he'd stepped on a pair of garden sheers. Why give his son an unnecessary fear of landscaping equipment? But he also saw no reason to give him an unnecessary fear of mob bosses carrying out prison sentences. He realized that sometimes, telling the truth didn't have to mean telling the facts. "Here's the deal with this question, Mike," he said slowly. "If you don't want me to lie to you, it's not one I can answer today."

Mike frowned. "Why not?"

He took a deep breath. "Because it's part of a long story that's too big for a kid. Even my kid, who's definitely much smarter than all the others."

Mike smiled at this. "But when will I be big enough for it?"

Michael definitely didn't know. "I'll know when. Definitely."

Mike continued to study his foot. "Does it have scary parts? The story of your toes?"

Michael nodded. "It does. But it also has good parts. Even big, not-for-kid stories have good parts."

Mike moved from his chair to climb into Michael's lap. His skin felt warm, dusted with a fine layer of sand. "Like what?"

"Well, after I got hurt," Michael ventured, "I felt someone holding my foot, just like this." He captured Mike's bare foot and cradled it very gently between his palms. "Even though it was bloody and gross and I was bawling like a baby."

Mike actually giggled. "Like a baby," he repeated.

"And when I looked up, who do you think it was, taking care of me, making me feel better?"

Mike's eyes alighted like he knew the correct answer on a pop quiz. "Mom."

Michael smiled at his certainty. "Of course your mom." They both looked out at the water, where Sara stood waist-deep in the gentle surf. "Should we go swimming with her?"

They made a dash for the water, and when they reached her, Sara looked between them with curious speculation. Maybe it was just the way she squinted into the sun, but Michael thought she looked faintly anxious, despite her confidence that Michael could handle the situation solo. "Dad says I can't know his toe story until I'm older," Mike informed her, and Michael watched the tense set of her jaw relax. "But you know what he said?"

"What?" Sara asked. They all paused as a small wave broke around them.

"He said he 'bawled like a baby!'" Mike laughed again, then watched his mother's reaction. "Did he?"

Sara just smiled, catching Mike under the armpits as he launched himself through the surf toward her. "Well, wouldn't you?" she asked.

* * *

In the evenings, they grilled fish at the house or dined out on breezy restaurant patios in Cabo, and at night, Michael tucked his son into bed with a kiss on his head, the lingering scent of coconut sunscreen and soap and seawater filling his nostrils. In his own bed, Sara smelled almost exactly the same, her long legs tangling with his as he grasped her sun-kissed shoulders, pulling her close to him.

Mike kept reminding them he wanted to surf, but Michael kept putting him off; he had a surprise…something he'd managed to arrange at the last minute. Their fourth evening at the bungalow, he slipped out after dinner, telling Sara only that he had an errand to run, and returned with a guest in tow.

"LJ!" Mike cried happily when they walked back in the door. He already wore his favorite Captain America pajamas; they'd returned just before bedtime. He flung himself at his cousin, who caught him and hauled him up for a hug.

"Hey little MJ," LJ laughed, adding, "Yeah, yeah, that's not his name," as Sara pulled him into her embrace, too.

"I had no idea you were coming," she said, with genuine joy, and to Michael's surprise, her eyes glittered with tears. Sometimes he forgot (let himself forget?) how close she and LJ had become under the thumb of Gretchen's captivity.

"When Uncle Mike called," LJ said, "I couldn't resist escaping Baylor for a few days."

Michael assessed his nephew in the lingering twilight filtering through the wisteria crawling up the pillars of the rental patio. He was certainly a boy no more. When Michael had first seen him after his exoneration, he'd been shocked, almost, at the confidence LJ now carried in his shoulders, the assuredness of his presence, the scared, angry child he'd once been eradicated by circumstance and character. Now, he had only a handful of credits remaining to finish his law degree, and Michael could easily envision him in a courtroom, fighting injustice on behalf of clients perhaps not very unlike his father.

After an hour catching up on the patio, LJ had mercy on Sara, who had been trying in vain to extract Mike from the adults to head to bed. "You'll want to be rested," he told his cousin, pausing for dramatic effect, "for surfing tomorrow."

Mike whooped. "Yes! Finally!" The excitement on his face sliced through Michael as easily as a knife through butter, infusing him with a surge of second-hand happiness. He tipped his bottle of beer at his nephew, gratitude and contentment and love suddenly threatening to undo him. He was almost glad when Sara turned away with Mike, afraid the intensity of emotion on his face would alarm them.

"How are _you_ doing?" LJ asked succinctly when they'd disappeared toward Mike's room, and again, Michael was startled by his maturity. How many times had Michael asked his nephew this same question over the years, fretting about choices in his upbringing with Lisa or Lincoln, worrying over his grades or his friends or his decisions. Now, the tables were turned.

He owed him the same honesty he'd received, sometimes hedged, sometimes coerced, from LJ in the past. "I'm immensely grateful," he said slowly, "for this gift I have been given, all I've been given back." Testing out this assessment on his tongue, he decided it was accurate. After love, gratitude was the most intensely felt emotion of his current life. "And to be truthful, I spend a good deal of time just trying to ensure I don't lose it…trying to hold onto this second life, desperate not to break it, drop it, shatter it, ruin it somehow."

LJ looked thoughtful for a moment. "What you have, though," he finally answered, with a nod toward the direction Sara had departed, "isn't as fragile as you think."

The truth of this analysis hit Michael squarely in the chest. Had it been a physical weight, he would have staggered backward. LJ was absolutely right. "When did you get so damned wise?" he asked him.

LJ smiled. "I have some pretty smart people to look up to," he said. "And I don't know if you're aware, but I've been through some shit."

They were both laughing when Sara returned to sit back down next to Michael. "Who's been through shit?" she asked with a smile.

LJ laughed anew. "In this room? Take your pick."

* * *

The next morning, Michael sat with Sara on the cool sand watching Mike surf. Or rather, watching LJ push Mike around in chest-deep water, guiding his board into each small swell. It took awhile, but Mike finally caught a wave, paddling for all his might, not noticing that LJ's strong push from the back of the board ensured the momentum needed. Sara chuckled at his look of delight when he sensed success, followed by his look of mild panic when he realized he was actually on his own in the crest of the small wave.

"Yeah!" LJ yelled from behind, treading water in the surf. "Now stand, Mike! Stand!"

He tried, managing to get to his knees before flipping off the board into the water. On the sand, Michael tensed, ready to run into the foam of the spent wave after him, but Sara laid a hand on his arm. "He's fine."

He was; he came up sputtering but smiling sheepishly, scanning the water for his board. LJ had retrieved it, and they paddled back out together, rocking over the crests of the tame wave set that followed. "He's a good swimmer," Michael noted, as he watched Mike release his board to LJ to bob under a wave like a little seal. It sent a familiar stab to Michael's heart: this was just one more small piece of Mike-knowledge falling into place to complete the picture forming in his mind. He sighed deeply; not because of the swimming, of course, but because of the way this type of knowledge trickled in so agonizingly slowly, it seemed. Michael felt grateful (there was that word again) for each fact and figure he learned about his son, but each of these moments also served to remind him how little he still knew his own child.

"What's wrong?" Sara asked. She missed nothing, squinting slightly in the sunshine as she turned to study him.

Michael only frowned. He doubted he could make her understand. "I didn't _know_ he could swim so well," he said dully.

He could tell Sara didn't know what to do with this explanation. He didn't know what to do with it, either. Getting to know Mike measure by measure was just how it was going to have to be. "It just makes me feel like a fraud," Michael said suddenly, and yes, that was it exactly. "Like I'm just play-acting at being his father."

"Because you didn't know how well he could swim?" she asked slowly. He could hear how crazy this sounded, but could stop himself from thinking this way. "I don't see why that matters," Sara argued, "when you're amazing with the stuff that does." He didn't answer, continuing to frown in the direction of their son, and she sighed in frustration. "You have stepped into his life and completely won him over," she pressed. "You have talked him through fears, fielded incredibly hard questions, navigated emotional landmines none of us felt prepared for."

"And then I take him to get his soccer uniform and don't know his shoe size," Michael added darkly.

"But that's the easy part," Sara protested. "At the hard part…oh, Michael. You have no idea how good you are at it. I know plenty of fathers who can recall their kids' clothing size but run from anything more complicated." On the water, Mike caught a second wave, and without thinking much of it, Michael gave him a thumbs up as he glided into the foam lapping the sand, earning him a happy grin. "See?" Sara practically wailed. "I wasn't even _watching._ "

Something about her dramatic reaction loosened the guilt clutching at him. He managed a glib smile. "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to watch your kid when he's in the water, Sara," he told her, nudging her shoulder with his own.

She assessed him, and he waited, still smiling slightly, while she tried to decide whether he was teasing her. "Well, then it's a good thing you're here now," she finally said softly, threading her fingers through his and squeezing.

He took a deep breath, tasting salt and sunshine and sea, and released it slowly. "A very good thing," he agreed.


	9. Chapter 9

Weeks 6-8

"So we're thinking of throwing a big party," Sara told Mike at dinner, "since we didn't get to see everybody last November. What do you think?"

"A party here?" Mike asked after a swallow of food.

"Yep."

"What kind of party?"

"Well, several kinds, really. A celebration, for your dad's and my anniversary, which is soon," she shot Michael a warm glance across the table, "and a thank you party, because so many people have helped us throughout the years. It could even be a holiday party if we have it before winter break is over. We'll invite Uncle Lincoln, and his friend Sheba, and LJ, and Fernando and his family, Benjamin, everyone."

Michael smiled into his pasta. "Benjamin?" he repeated. "Is that what we're calling C-Note these days?"

Sara shrugged. "It's what Mike calls him, anyway."

"And Alex," Mike added. "He's kind of nice, when he comes to Panama."

Sara and Michael looked at each other across the table again. "Yeah," she agreed. "He is." They really had all come a long way, hadn't they? Thinking of Alex Mahone made her think of Paul Kellerman, and she let the accompanying wave of regret at his death have its moment with her. It was hard to remember there had been a time she'd wanted to strangle him with her bare hands.

"Can we have a bounce house?" Mike wanted to know. "Like a castle kind?"

"It might have to be an indoor party," Michael laughed, "but we'll see."

They decided on the first weekend of January, right after the new year. Michael didn't have any of his new engineering projects during that week, and Sucre had assured them he would be on leave from his latest cargo ship gig. Even LJ's busy schedule wouldn't conflict: he'd passed his bar exam just last month, and didn't start his new job at Legal Aid until after the holidays. Sitting down later that evening to jot down a to-do list, Sara looked over at Michael in the space he'd carved out for his work in the home office.

"Are we crazy for doing this?" she called. "There's so much to do, and right after the holidays. The food alone…"

Michael grabbed his reading glasses off the desk and moved behind her to see her list. "I think it'll be great," he told her. "In fact, maybe it will become a new tradition: a post-holiday party for everyone, instead of that Panama thing you do." He kissed the top of her head. "Because no offense, but that tradition needs to go."

She laughed, lifting her head to catch his expression upside-down. She thought of their recent escape to Chicago and Mexico. "And now we have Baja instead, right?"

He squeezed her shoulder. "Right."

* * *

When they'd returned from their trip, they'd continued their sessions with Dr. Kate. Michael couldn't deny that the therapist managed to push buttons that needed pushing, but that didn't mean he had to like it. LJ's wisdom served as a useful mantra in his head: _she's not fragile, we're not fragile_ , he told himself, as each session commenced. Sometimes, he even believed it.

"You both look relaxed and rested," Dr. Kate said with slight surprise when they entered her office the week after their return from Mexico. She'd expressed skepticism beforehand, wondering whether going away together had been in their best interests so soon after Michael's return. What she didn't understand, Michael reasoned, was how he and Sara functioned best: moving forward. Working together toward something better. It was true, they may brush the line of adrenaline and danger too often ( _Do you ever think there's a part of you that enjoys this?_ ), but normalcy had never been part of their relationship. The gaping hole of the past seven years often caught Michael off-guard when its abyss loomed up at him, because for days at a time, they managed to operate far away from its edge. And of course, before there had been Jacob, before any threat of Poseidon, before even Mike, there had been _them_ , which, thank God, had proved strong enough to withstand all the rest.

"Let's talk about Yemen," Dr. Kate said today. Usually, when she announced a topic, one of them looked nervous and the other relieved to be out of the hot seat, but in this case, both Michael and Sara blanched. The therapist noticed, of course. "Why does that bother both of you?"

"Michael needs to talk about it," Sara ventured, "to help relieve the panic attacks. But…I'll admit I'm afraid of what he'll say."

"Why?" Dr. Kate probed.

Sara's eyes slid to Michael. "Because he doesn't corner the market on guilt."

Michael frowned at this. "Which is why I don't think she needs to hear about it." He looked at her. "My decisions there, my mistakes there, were _not_ yours."

Kate considered this. "We could discuss your experiences in Ogygia one-on-one, Michael, if you both agree, but I'll warn you," she told Sara, "it will catch up to you eventually. You'll want to fill in those gaps, and Michael?" She turned her attention his way. "You'll need to be prepared to go down that path with her."

Michael nodded. He believed he could do that…eventually. "For now, can we talk about Greece instead?" he asked, surprising himself. He still had large holes in his timeline of that period, when he'd been in and out of consciousness. He wouldn't mind filling in a few. He turned to Sara. "Why did you come?"

"What kind of question is that?" she answered, almost lazily, like Michael was lobbing softballs at her, easy to hit out of the park.

"I mean," he clarified, "You could have met me back in the States, after I'd recovered. You left Mike at home," he noted softly, "which must have been a hard thing to do right then, with so much going on."

"But I had to."

'Had to' was a different statement than 'wanted to', which had been the one Michael expected. "Why?"

Sara seemed slow to answer, like now he'd thrown her a curveball. "Uh, there were no blood banks Lincoln could get to quickly enough." She seemed to consider her words carefully. "I had to bring everything we needed with me."

"Two liters of blood stored with you on a commercial flight? Doesn't it have to stay cold?" As the blood had flowed into his body, he hadn't questioned it, not with Sara there delivering it. But now…had she done something even more risky? Hitched a ride on a private plane with criminals, as he and Lincoln later had? What? His question had Sara looking over at the therapist like she needed a referee. Michael said more firmly, "Sara? You couldn't bring blood on that flight."

She released a low breath, tipping her head back to rest on couch cushion like she was suddenly weary. Staring at the ceiling, she said, "I could if it was still in my body, Michael." To Dr. Kate she added, "I'm O negative."

" _Your_ blood?" Michael breathed, his voice oddly strangled. How had he not worked this out before now? That she would do this for him the instant she first saw him after seven long years…before any explanations, any reconciliation, before anything else at all, filled him with a heady rush of warmth, as though the blood in question flowed between them anew. "It was so _much_ blood," he choked.

Dr. Kate seemed to agree on this point. "Four-times the usual donation amount." She couldn't seem to stop herself from asking, "Did you pass out?" with clinical curiosity.

Sara shook her head in the negative. "It wasn't so much," she assured Michael. "Lincoln called it at 1.5 liters." Her mouth quirked at a memory. "Said you all might still be in need of a doctor later."

Michael exhaled, and reached for her hand across the couch. "I didn't know, Sara." As if that made any difference.

She looked at him like she could somehow will the guilt out of his expression. "And you didn't have to." Just like he didn't think she needed to hear about Yemen, Michael thought, with pang. She held his gaze, still battling the responsibility he knew she saw there. "All I needed was a vein to stick."

"But you didn't even know why I'd been in Yemen yet. You didn't know why I had left you." He had to bite down on the last two words, as though bracing against a sharp pain.

Sara just shook her head. "It didn't matter. Not yet."

He recalled her words to their son the morning they'd all been reunited in the kitchen. _Your blood is like my blood._ He suddenly felt impossibly heavy; he leaned his head against her shoulder, letting Sara curl a hand over his skull and gently draw him against her. If the therapist hadn't been in the room, he would have eventually lifted his head to kiss her slowly and deeply while he floated languidly in the revelation of what she'd done for him, perhaps for hours.

Dr. Kate gaped at them. "I have to say," she said finally, "the more time we spend together, the less I worry about you two."

* * *

Michael's new security engineering practice was a very immediate success. He made every effort to complete his work for the day before the 3 pm school pick-up time, but on the few occasions he needed to return to the home office after school, Mike didn't seem to mind. He usually studied the blueprints and security schematics Michael pinned to the wall, tracing a finger along the routes of entry or non-entry, asking Michael how each door and access point worked. Today, he sat in the office chair by Michael's laptop, spinning slowly in circles while Michael stared at a particularly stubborn security code on his most recent project for a major university research lab.

"Can I have screen time?" Mike asked.

Michael nodded absently, eyes still pinned to the code he'd blown up and projected on the wall. It was missing at least one safety measure that would prevent a backdoor loophole, but it eluded him. He frowned at the paper in frustration. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mike open the laptop, and it occurred to him to ask what game he wanted to play on there, but then the answer to his problem on the wall clicked in his brain and he refocused his attention on the code instead. He lost himself in thought, checking and double-checking his work.

Suddenly, at the desk, Mike said, _"Whoa."_

"Hmm?" Michael didn't glance over. If he changed the primary security entry point to a fingerprint scan, that would lock down both the inner lab doors…

"Dylan was right," Mike said. "If you Google your name, _loads_ of stuff comes up."

Michael spun toward the computer screen, his schematics completely forgotten. "What did you say?" Mike didn't answer, busy scrolling through page after page of news reports, exposes, and video clips.

He read way too efficiently for a first grader. "What does in-car-cer-ation mean? Or ex-on-er-at-ion?" _Shit!_ Panic sluiced through Michael, closing his throat even to the curse that rose there. He reached across his son and exited the web browser with one stroke. "Hey!" Mike protested. "I was looking at that!"

Michael's heartbeat pounded violently in his ears. He found it hard to think. "Did I say you could get on the internet?" he heard himself yell.

Mike's chin quivered. "No," he whispered. "I guess not."

Michael forced himself to breathe. "I'm sorry," he said, pinching his eyes shut to the sight of his son cowering in the chair. _God damn it._ "I'm sorry, Mike. It's okay."

Mike sat stiffly. "Why are you so mad?"

"I'm not. I overreacted. I'm sorry."

"I think Google was talking about you, not me," Mike noted cautiously, as though this might cheer Michael up.

"Yes, it was."

"Because we have the same name."

"Yes. I know, Mike."

"And I haven't been in-car-cer-ated," he reasoned. "I don't think."

A tightness consumed Michael's chest and lungs, grabbing him in a chokehold. "No." _Nor will you be._ He lifted Mike gently from the chair to make room for himself, then settled him back on his lap, wrapping his arms around him. He sat there, holding Mike carefully until he relaxed a bit in his arms, trying to to reduce the scream in his ears to a low rumble so he could figure out what to do.

After a moment, Mike asked, "Can we open it back up? Because I think I saw Uncle Lincoln's picture there too. And Fernando's."

"No," Michael said definitively. But more gently. "Please, Mike. Just let me think."

Mike waited quietly. He occupied himself tracing the damned lines of ink along the tops of Michael's hands. He hadn't ever seen those hands raised to form the image they made, had never seen the whole picture, and if Michael had his way, he never would. But they'd discussed this, Michael and Sara, after the incident in Baja with his toes. He'd known this moment would eventually come for him, when his past caught up to him. He'd just been naive enough to hope that day was still years away. He took a long, deep breath.

"Incarceration means being in prison," he told Mike slowly. "Exoneration means being freed from an accusation, or freed from prison, because you hadn't done anything wrong." He let this explanation sit with Mike for a moment.

Eventually, Mike's fingers stilled on Michael's skin. He leaned his head heavily against his chest. "You went to prison?" he asked, his voice very small.

The pain of hearing this question from his child's lips was almost enough to destroy Michael. He willed himself to keep it together as despair crashed down on him in waves; no one could right this ship except himself. His eye caught the schematic on the wall, and he clung to this like a lifeline. "You know how I help keep buildings safe from the wrong people getting into them?" He felt Mike nod against his shirt. "I'm also good at getting out of buildings. Prisons," he clarified, "that I was never supposed to be in."

"Because you didn't do anything wrong?"

"That's right." His voice sounded very far away somehow. Tinny, almost, like he was speaking through a mouthpiece.

"But you broke out of them, anyway? Out of prisons with bars and locks and stuff?"

"Because I had to." He still felt distant, like this whole conversation was an out-of-body experience.

Mike went quiet for a moment again, and then said, _"Cool."_

This opinion landed with a thump that brought Michael right back to the here and now. He turned Mike around to face him. "No, Mike. Not cool. I did it because I had no other choice. To help people I love. Later, to protect people I love."

"People like me?"

Some of the tightness in his chest loosened. "Yes."

He thought for a moment, reminding himself that while he would not lie to his son, he could decide what information to impart, and when. "And there were many important reasons for what I did, but I'm not going to explain all those right now, because you don't need to know them right now."

He thought Mike would protest this, but instead, he said simply, "Like your toes?"

"Like my toes."

Mike released a little sigh against his chest. What did he feel? Frustration? Disappointment? Relief? Fear? "Okay, Dad," he said quietly. "I can have a little faith." Michael looked down at him in surprise. "That's what Uncle Linc always says."

Michael drew his first full breath since Mike had opened the laptop, drinking in the scent of his son's skin, the trace of fabric softener in his t-shirt, his apple-scented shampoo lingering in his hair. "Thank you," he told him. This child was a marvel. There were times Michael was simply humbled and awed and floored by him.

Mike wiggled on his lap. "For what?" A hint of his usual happy confidence had returned to his voice.

For such grace. For such trust. "For just being you," Michael told him. "For being here with me." He wrapped his arms back around him, his heart swelling when Mike snuggled up against him without reservation. "Because I am so very, very glad to be here with you."

* * *

Removing the tattoos from Michael's hands and arms was even more complicated and painful a process than Sara had feared. She insisted he go to the city for the procedure, to ensure the best dermatologists would be on-hand, and the fancy out-patient clinic cost a fortune, but even so, recovery was slow and agonizing. Michael insisted on nothing stronger than Tylenol, a request Sara outright ignored, ordering him a round of Oxycodene that effectively knocked him out for 24 hours.

He was displeased when he came to. "You shouldn't have to handle narcotics," he told her drowsily.

She answered him passively. "I'm fine, Michael. I handle them all the time. Just try to rest."

"But not in your own home. This stuff is basically morphine," he complained. "It's not necessary."

"I think if I turned off this drip, you'd change your mind very quickly," she said mildly.

"Then at least hire someone else to deal with me," he said. "A nurse or something."

"Oh good grief, Michael. But thanks for the vote of confidence in me. That feels great." _That_ had guilted him into shutting up. He turned to face the wall, unable to come up with an effective counter-argument.

At breakfast the next morning, he could move around in slightly less pain, but acted more frustrated than ever. "I think it's because its my hands," he complained. "I can't do _anything_." He'd been trying to pick up a plate with his bandaged fingers, a task, for the record, he hadn't needed to attempt.

"You're supposed to just be resting," Sara pointed out. "That may help, actually." He sighed and sat down at the table, staring at nothing.

"I'm going to get tattoos someday," Mike chimed in. "But I'm not going to get them off again. No way."

Michael smiled thinly. "We'll see about that," he said.

"Maddy at school says that her mom says tats on men are super hot."

Sara rolled her eyes. "Maddy's just a wealth of information, isn't she?"

"Is that the kid who knows everything about dating?" Michael asked Sara. "And also?" he added in Mike's direction, "I don't think you need to be saying 'hot'".

That only seemed to remind Mike of something. "Maddy's mom said that Dad's tats are 'Off. The. Chart'. I don't know what chart, though."

Sara choked on a hot gulp of coffee trying to set Michael's food in front of him. "And to think she missed the best ones," she said into his ear, to be rewarded with his first smile in days.

* * *

School pick ups continued to prove interesting, even when Michael managed to avoid Maddy's mother's admiration of body art. Unlike what Michael and Sara would have experienced in Chicago, no one really knew their full story in Ithaca; Sara had been part of the community for a long time, after all. Fox River and prison escape weren't on many people's radar. In Ithaca, the bigger headline was Jacob's arrest and imprisonment for crimes against the CIA. Michael understood this in a subjective sense: they had known Jacob. He had been there one day, and gone the next. But on a personal level, if he heard his name on someone's lips one more time, he might lose it.

And then, of course, there was the subtitle to this headline, possibly even more tantalizing: Sara's first husband, who had been declared deceased for years, was back, and standing right over there, filling out his kid's Scholastic book order like a completely normal person. Michael didn't think he seemed all that approachable, waiting for the the dismissal bell, but he must have been, because parents approached him all the time. Everyone seemed to need to do the 'you're Mike's father, aren't you?' routine, as though they didn't already know, hadn't just been whispering about it. The most brave among them followed up by fishing for info about where he'd been, exactly, all these years.

Luckily for Michael, he'd never been afraid of eye contact, had no trouble staring people down to the point of intimidation, and didn't mind imparting vague information that resulted in frustrated expressions. In fact, he rather enjoyed it. What he didn't enjoy was wondering what those parents were going home and saying around their dinner table, which in turn their children would say eventually on the playground.

He brought this worry up at the end of a very long and draining session with Sara and Dr. Kate on the subject of Mike's adventures with Google. "We can't control the information that's out there," Sara said wearily, "whether we're here, or in Chicago, or anywhere else. It will follow us." Michael knew she was right; even long-archived news lay beneath the surface at all times, waiting to be triggered like land mines.

"But you can control what you tell Mike, what he hears at home, from you," Kate reminded them. "And that will ring far louder for him that anything he hears on the school bus."

"You can't possibly be suggesting we tell him everything now, before he hears it somewhere else," Michael argued.

"He's way too young," Sara echoed.

Dr. Kate agreed. "And what matters is that _you_ both agree. But let's backtrack: Michael, what I'm hearing you say is that for you, the most worrisome aspect of any gossip circulating is its effect on Mike. Is that accurate?"

Michael nodded. He didn't much care what other people thought of him: his few friends either knew his whole story or didn't care, and his work was global. To be frank, his reputation only aided in garnering the lucrative contracts that came his way faster than he could accept them.

Kate turned to Sara. "What about you?"

"My first concern is also Mike," she said, but then she grew quiet for a moment. "But I'll admit I dislike it…the double-takes, the emboldened questions. I think…well, it doesn't matter."

As if she was going to get away with a statement like _that_ in this room. Michael could have delivered Dr. Kate's predictable chastisement himself. "Sara? Finish your thought, please."

She sighed. "I was going to say, I think women are more harshly judged in these matters. When there's a juicy tabloid story, I mean. Michael breaks out of prison, and it's all, 'oh wow, hot, impressive'. There's this whole bad boy infatuation thing he gets to enjoy."

"I don't enjoy—"

"But with me, its not 'wow, impressive'. It's 'Are you sleeping with him? Did you fall for him?' Like if a woman is involved, it has to be personal, and it has to be racy: sexual immorality, something like that. It's bullshit, that's all."

"You're absolutely right, Sara," Kate agreed, "but it may be easier to silence the media than eradicate chronic sexism this afternoon, don't you think?"

Sara nodded wryly, but Michael wasn't as ready to toss this whole observation into the 'figuratively speaking' pile. "Who has made you feel this way?"

He was thinking of men like Bellick, men like Roland, maybe. Some asshole at the school? At work? But she smiled at him a bit sadly, like he'd missed the point. "Everyone, Michael." She exhaled. "I mean, not the people who really know me, of course."

Anger on her behalf rose swiftly, surprising Michael. Maybe it was for the best that he didn't have a daughter. "I'm sorry," he said, not because saying so would fix it, or even help at all, but because he _couldn't_ fix it. Their shared past left so many fires to put out, strewn over so many battlefields, he sometimes neglected to spot some burning unattended.

"Thank you," she told him sincerely, and maybe it had helped, at least, to voice this. "But what about Mike? What do we do on that front?"

Kate had an idea, but she warned them that they may not like it. "Instead of giving him more information, why don't we ask _him_ for some?" She explained what she meant, and five minutes later, Mike sat between them, finishing the snack he'd started with Kate's assistant in the next room, where he'd been in IDT. Michael knew this was his favorite kind of therapy, where he got to draw his thoughts using fancy pens and art paper.

"Mike," Kate said, when he'd finished his juice, "When big things happen, big things like your dad coming home, Jacob going to prison, that sort of thing, it's normal for people to want to talk about it a lot. Do you notice that?"

Mike toyed with the straw from his juice box. "I notice that _you_ guys talk about it a lot."

Michael hid a smile. Fair point.

"But other people? Maybe at school? Or at soccer?"

"Talk about my dad?" He flicked a glance at Michael.

"Sure. Or your mom."

He thought about this for a moment. "Sometimes, things like, 'Did you stepdad really go to jail?' Zack asked that at soccer," he said, speaking to his parents now. "And other kids, sometimes."

"And what do you say?" Sara breathed.

"Just…" Mike shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Just, 'yeah'. I don't really ever say anything more."

Sara made a slightly pained _ahh_ sound, but Michael couldn't tear his eyes from his son's small shoulders. He could almost _see_ the weight resting there that shouldn't be. Another fire burning…this one now raging in his own chest, threatened to combust. His boy had absolutely nothing to do with this. He was completely blameless. Michael wanted to pick him up and physically remove him from it all…just set him down somewhere untouched by his and Sara's past. But this child had been conceived in a cavernous safe house to wanted parents, in a little landlocked boat that only offered a weak imitation of safety and freedom. Maybe this was simply in his DNA. The idea felt so depressing, Michael's own shoulders fell.

Mike still twirled his juice straw between his fingers. Michael kind of wished he had something to do with his hands, too. "At Dakota's birthday party last week," Mike offered, "Dakota asked me if Dad was scary. I think she wanted me to say yes, because she likes scary things, like scary movies, but I don't."

Michael heard an odd hum of noise, like a low moan, then everyone looked at him and he clamped his jaw shut. "Sorry," he whispered. Mike looked at him like maybe he did look a little scary right now, and that didn't help.

"What do you think made her ask that?" Dr. Kate probed. This seemed like the wrong question to Michael. He wanted to know how Mike had responded, but his throat had gone too dry to ask.

Mike looked hesitant now. His gaze slid from Michael to Sara, then immediately off her again. "She asked 'cause of something we heard her mom say. When she saw us, she stopped talking right away."

Michael glanced to Sara, who looked sick to her stomach as Kate asked gently, "What did her mom say?"

Mike kept glancing at Sara. "I don't really want to tell." He bent the straw in half, then watched it spring back up in his hands. He did this twice.

Kate said, "Why not, Mike?"

He worried his bottom lip with his teeth, and without consciously deciding to do so, Michael glanced at Sara to see if she was doing the same. Mike said, "It might have a bad word in it? I don't know for sure."

All three adults sucked in a breath at the same time. Sara's eyes flashed with an anger Michael knew was reflected in his own.

"Mike, you don't get in trouble for anything you say in here," Kate reminded him.

He swallowed, then said to his crumpled juice box, "She said, 'I don't know how Sara Scofield can sleep at night, letting a con in her bed'." He glanced up sharply. "Is 'con' a bad word? She said it like a bad word, but she also said 'bed' like a bad word. Why?"

Sara blurted, "She doesn't even _know_ us!" Kate set a hand on her knee, but she shook it off angrily. "I swear, I…" she looked at Mike, and bit back whatever she was going to say. "I need a minute." She stood and bolted from the room.

Mike blinked back tears. Kate leaned toward him. "It's not a bad word. Sometimes people are afraid of some words, is all, when they don't understand them properly."

Mike's voice sounded very small. " _I_ don't understand it." He looked at the door that had slammed shut behind Sara. "And I made Mom leave."

Michael swallowed every bit of the pain that threatened to explode from him, and rose to his feet. "I'll go get her. She'll be right back, Mike."

In the hallway, Sara bent double at the waist, leaning against the wall. She lifted her head when she heard the door open and close again. "Do you see what I mean now?" she spit out. "You get scary-enticing con, and I get slut."

"Sara." He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. If he had to absorb all her pain along with his, could he do it? He tugged her from the wall into his arms, wrapping himself around her tense, stiff form. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"And in front of Mike," she cried. She hit the heels of her fists against his chest with each word, but they didn't make much of an impact, he held her so close.

"We can fix that," Michael promised. "He'll know what's real." He brushed her hair back from her face, trying to soothe as she took deep choked breaths against his shirt. "And knowing what's real is always enough, Sara."

He felt her nod, even while exhaling on one last hard sob of anger. "I love you," he said. After a moment, he felt forced to add, "And I know it's not fair to you, but you need to go back in there."

"I know," she whispered. "I am."

Back in the therapy room, Sara went straight to Mike. He started to say, "I'm sor—" but she shook her head and opened her arms to him. She pressed her lips to the side of his nose, right in the crease where his cheek began. It was her favorite spot to kiss on Mike, and Mike knew it. He experimented with a faltering smile.

Michael said pointedly to Dr. Kate, "Do you think you could find another juice for Mike?"

Kate looked at Sara as though assessing her emotional state, then nodded, smiling to Mike on her way out. She shut the door more quietly than Sara had managed. Michael sat on the other side of them and said, "A con is someone who's been to prison, like when we talked about that 'incarceration' word. When Dakota's mom said 'bed' like that, she just meant living together, really, as a family."

"Like as a mom and a dad?"

Michael swallowed. "Yes."

"Why is that bad?"

Even with Mike between them, Michael sensed Sara tensing up again. "It's _not_ bad, Mike. Mom and I are _good_. Our family is _good_. I am 100% sure of this."

"Okay," he agreed flatly.

This felt like a less than satisfying answer to Michael. "Let's talk about what you know, Mike. And about what's real. Because your mom and I have learned that sometimes, knowing what's real can be tricky. But once you know, when you hear someone say something wrong, you can ignore it better, and not worry."

He received another quiet 'okay'.

"You know I was forced to be away from you and your mom because I'm good at breaking out of prisons, and that there were people who made me do that for them. People like Jacob. You know that I have been _in_ prisons, and now you know that when you're in prison, it's sometimes called being a con. You know that I have been exonerated, that other big word we talked about, and won't be in prisons or work for prisons ever again." He ticked these points off on his fingers one by one. "You also know there is more to this big story, more that Mom and I will tell you when we think you're ready. These are the facts, and maybe, people will talk about these facts or ask you about them, even though they shouldn't."

He paused, letting Mike process this, then continued. "You also know that your mom and I have loved each other for a very long time. Since before you were born. You know that we missed each other very much, and you know that we trust each other. Mom trusts me with you, and I trust her with me, and in our house and beds and every other piece of furniture, you are safe and loved and so are we." He had to pause to draw breath after that. "These are the real things. And what's real isn't always something other people, people not in our house, can see clearly. But we see it, and we can be sure of it."

Mike nodded mutely. Next to him, Sara rested her head lightly against Mike's shoulder, face hidden. "Did that sound alright, sweetheart?" Michael asked her softly. He used this endearment very sparingly, allowing it to pass his lips only when he really, really wanted to make sure she truly heard him. "Do you want to add anything?"

She shook her head silently. "That was exactly right," she whispered. She reached her arm across their son, silently requesting Michael's hand. He slid his fingers around her wrist and across her palm to clasp hers gently.

Mike looked down at their hands across his knee and said, "I like it when you do that."

Michael thought he might completely lose it at this, and then Sara released a breathy little laugh. "Yeah? We do, too." She studied Mike hard for a moment. "Are you okay, baby?"

He curled up under Sara's extended arm, bringing one hand up to rest on Michael's bicep. "Yes, but, it's taking Dr. Kate a really long time to get my juice, don't you think?"

Sara laughed lightly again, and this time, the sound didn't quite catch in her throat. "I'm sure she'll be back really soon."


	10. Chapter 10

Week 10-13

The holiday season, and its assorted array of high expectations, familial obligation, and emotional baggage descended upon them before Sara was quite prepared for it. "Well, you've spent seven Christmases without Michael," her friend Heather pointed out, when they managed to carve out a hour or so for a cup of coffee. "No wonder you're feeling a little off-balance."

"I've actually spent 36 without him," Sara mused. "We've never shared the holiday, which in theory, means we should be able to do anything we want." Her birthday had been harder, much harder, to endure the past seven years, the sight of her origami rose — such a small gesture, really — weighing her down the entire week.

"But in practice?" Heather prompted.

"In practice," Sara said slowly, pausing to sip her latte to buy herself time before actually addressing this, "who I've spent the past four Christmases with seems to loom much larger." She and Michael both pretended to conveniently forget how integral Jacob had been in Sara and Mike's holiday, for the other's sake, a battle they were steadily losing. "The truth is," Sara told Heather, "and I will never tell Michael this," she added hastily, "Jacob was always so _good_ at doing Christmas. Remember?"

Heather chuckled ruefully. "Oh yeah, the Santa suit, the caroling, the perfectly wrapped gifts and decorated cookies…you're right."

It made Sara want to weep in a weirdly hysterical kind of way. She didn't need that holiday anymore - had never actually needed it - but it still lingered there, in her mind. Her Christmases had been over-the-top idyllic for the past few years, right down to the trimmed tree and the sleigh bells. She meant that literally: Jacob had ordered authentic sleigh bells for the front door. How damned cheery he had always been, over-doing it on gifts for Mike and Sara, making his specialty egg nog, buying orchestra level tickets to the Nutcracker… It made Sara's stomach lurch now, the rich coffee she'd swallowed turning sour. "Do you think…" she asked Heather, then stopped. She didn't want to face the idea that Jacob had found perverse pleasure in making her holiday perfect while Michael suffered in Yemen.

Heather simply laid a hand on top of Sara's. "I do think," she answered solemnly. "And I want to march up to whatever prison he's locked away in, and punch him in the fucking face."

Her friend so rarely swore, Sara cracked a smile despite herself. "And then decorate his cell with boughs of holly and strings of lights." That hysterical laugh/cry was threatening to escape again.

"Oh, the twinkling kind, that run on a timer?" Heather deadpanned.

"Of course. Nothing but the best." She swallowed more coffee so the knot in her throat couldn't give way to a cry.

"Fuck him," Heather said firmly, certainly on a roll with the f-bombs. "Now you can have a fucked up holiday like all the rest of us. You'll see…it can be fun." She smiled a bit wickedly at Sara, which released some of the tight anger fisting in her chest. "Honest to goodness truth?" she said. "All you have to do is get through it. Nothing has to be perfect, not anymore. You and Michael, if you don't mind my saying so, don't seem to require perfect."

"Well," Sara sighed, "we certainly know how to operate without being anywhere in the vicinity."

"And you're kind of sickeningly in love, so there's that helpful detail in your favor."

Sara let herself smile. "There _is_ that." She looked at Heather, and the fierce loyalty and concern she saw in her face threatened to undo her again. Lord knew true friends were hard for her to come by. "Thank you," she whispered.

* * *

Sara took Heather's advice, aiming, through the rest of December, for simply 'not perfect'. Mike aided in this endeavor by pointing out ways in which they were doing things 'differently' or 'wrong' this year with a regularity that set her teeth on edge.

"There's no right way to make gingerbread houses," she told him in exasperation, to which Mike and Michael predictably objected. "I mean," she clarified, "even if we used to make them after dinner before the school pageant," due to Jacob's class schedule, she added silently, "we can make them in the middle of the day if we want to."

This idea met with lukewarm acceptance from Mike, but the hits just kept coming. "But what about ice skating?" he wanted to know. "And caroling at the university? We always do that, too, but not this year?" Jacob's department organized the event, and Sara watched helplessly as Mike recalled all that had transpired the last time he'd been in Jacob's university office. All three of them then had the pleasure of feeling miserable for a few minutes.

Michael pinched his eyes shut, fingers massaging his temple in slow circles. It was his go-to body language whenever he wished a problem would simply go away. "Why don't you just make a list of all your favorite…traditions," he stumbled over this word, "and we'll just do them?" He looked like this idea appealed to him about as much as walking barefoot on broken glass.

She knew he'd do whatever it took to make Mike happy, even if it meant subscribing to the annual Jacob Holiday Itinerary. "If I get a vote," Sara tried, "I vote for making new traditions."

Michael shook this gesture off. "Whatever Mike wants," he repeated grimly.

"Sounds fun," she muttered.

A few days later, she found Michael in the freezing garage, staring down multiple tangles of holiday lights he'd unearthed from their storage container. Jacob's lights, her brain registered with a heavy clunk…the ones he labored over every damn year, in order to win some imaginary brightest house on the block award. The sight of Michael picking up this task caused Sara's stomach to heave abruptly. She looked away as she tried to steady herself, studying the back wall of the garage. Camping gear, a soccer net, and Mike's bike lay stored in the corner. Jacob had bought that net, she thought suddenly. And the bike. Had taught Mike to ride it, too. "Just…don't, okay?" she heard herself tell Michael. Her voice sounded sharp, but fragile…like it should be stored behind glass, not thrown across the garage at him.

"Don't what?" Michael sounded testy, too. "Mike? Grab this box while I get the ladder."

Mike looked up from a second box of decorations, surprised. "I can help? I not just supposed to stay out of the way this year?"

Michael's eyes narrowed. "Guess we're doing new traditions after all," he announced flatly.

The way he twisted Sara's earlier words landed like a slap. Had he meant them so harshly? Or was she overreacting? "Just…come inside," she managed. The sight of Michael holding those lights was making her feel almost panicky at this point. Her skin had turned clammy and hot. "Don't bother with those. Are you listening to me? Please."

He turned to set the ladder back down slowly. Even with his back to her, she could feel some dark emotion rolling off him in waves. It lapped at her, hinting at some inevitable outcome she knew she wouldn't enjoy. She hadn't been overreacting. He waited until Mike rounded the corner to the driveway before biting out, " _Why,_ Sara?"

The two words, so inoffensive, exploded with angry energy at her feet.

She decided to fight fire with fire. "Because I want it all gone, okay? All these boxes, all those lights…gone. I don't ever want to see them again." Her voice shook, and she felt frighteningly brittle now. Tinder, already sparked. "You put up one light, I swear to God I'll rip it down." She turned on her heel to retreat back into the house.

"Sara!"

She didn't answer, but with each step, her resolve strengthened. She meant it. In her mind's eye, she was already setting fire to every memory of Jacob that sprang up to haunt her…the holiday decorations, the damned traditions…by the time she slammed the kitchen door, she'd thrown even Mike's bike onto her metaphoric bonfire. She felt prepared to set a match to this whole fucking house right about now. She leaned into the kitchen sink for a long minute, thinking she might actually vomit, then sank into a chair, wrapping her arms around her middle and trying not to fly apart at the seams.

"Sara."

She chanced a glance at him, and immediately regretted it. Another swell of nausea rose at the hurt and misunderstanding she saw on his face. She did her best to breathe through it.

"Are you feeling alright?" His voice still sounded raw, but it had softened at the edges.

She shook her head, then laid her face into the crook of her elbow.

She felt him move away, and in a sharp rise of disbelief, thought he was walking out of the room. Then she heard the familiar sounds of the cabinet closing and faucet opening, and he was back at her elbow, sliding a glass of water toward her. He eased into the chair across from her, but she didn't move. She had a bad feeling that if she drank the water, it would come right back up.

After a while, Michael said, a bit resentfully, "Alright. I'll start." She opened her eyes to study his hands on the table. They were splayed tensely. He was definitely still angry. "I feel like I'm facing an enemy I don't really know and I can't see," he said.

"They're just Christmas lights, Michael."

"Which you banished from the house on sight," he pointed out. It did seem crazy, the way he put it. He sighed. "I need to know when I'm stepping into territory I'm not part of, Sara. Good memories. Things you did together. Because it hurts too much this way."

She had to face him now. She propped her chin on her arm. "They're not good memories," she corrected him. He tried to deflect this, but she found enough energy not to let him. "They're lies. They're all the ways in which he tried too hard, all the moments I should have seen what a narcissistic, psychotic person I was dealing with. I mean, who needs that many fucking lights?"

The ghost of a smile played about his mouth, but only briefly. Then the resentment returned. "Mike seems to want them."

"You don't give Mike enough credit," she told him, curling her hand around the water glass. "He can tell the difference between lights and the latest toys and actual, real love, you know." She paused, but Michael still didn't answer. "Otherwise, he'd be crying for Jacob right now." His actual name didn't pass her lips in Michael's presence unless it was absolutely necessary, but she was beginning to consider this an emergency.

The shock value worked. Michael sat upright in his chair, instantly tense again. He who shall not be named, she thought irritably. "And he's not, you'll notice." She softened her voice. "He just wants to share with you the things he associates with the holiday."

Michael spoke slowly. "It's not his fault he did all this first with…Jacob, but he did, and I don't know how to get past that."

She thought of the bike she'd just wanted to burn to ashes. "Me, neither." How she hated that Jacob had stolen all that from Michael. Heather's advice came back to her, and she grimaced, thinking of how royally she'd screwed it all up in the garage. "Maybe…let's try not to assign the holiday such importance, Michael."

"Spoken by someone who's experienced a lifetime of perfect holidays."

She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of this jibe. "I may have had the lights and the tree, but I also had a workaholic father and alcoholic mother, followed by several fuzzy years of addiction, then a psychotic pseudo-husband. I don't think so, Michael."

He relented then, fingers once again pinching the bridge of his nose, staving off something darker than even the truth of her words. "You're right, of course." He touched her arm experimentally, squeezing her bicep when she didn't pull away. "I'm sorry, Sara. I'm trying." He paused, hand still on her sleeve, and said, "And I think I have an idea."

He called to Mike, and they both left by the front door. When they returned, they had Sara's teenaged neighbor in tow, and Michael was doling $20 bills into his palm, one after another. The kid eyed the money collecting in his hand like Christmas had just come early. Sara watched in exhausted amusement as Michael instructed him to drop off the old lights at the Salvation Army, buy a simple set of new lights — Mike whispered something in his ear at this point, and he amended this — buy those new lights that flashed colors, and put them up by the weekend. When the teen had departed with enthusiasm, dragging boxes of lights in his wake, Mike asked, "Do I still get to help?"

Sara lifted herself wearily from the chair and planted a kiss on his head. "I think that's what at least one of those twenties was for," she smiled. Over Mike's head, she caught Michael's eye. I'm sorry, she mouthed. He sighed shakily, and mimicked her caress, his lips first brushing the top of her head, then Mike's.

* * *

In the end, the holiday reminded Sara of the first Christmas after her mother had died: no one knew how to go about it, no one felt particularly festive, and everyone, except perhaps Mike, felt a measure of relief when it ended. For Sara, the exception to this rule came on Christmas Eve, when they gave in to Mike's request to go to the church service they 'always' attended. They invited Heather and Larry and Dylan, who provided the gift of normalcy throughout the evening. Afterward, when they pulled up to the house with its understated string of lights, Michael carried a sleepy Mike up to bed, then returned downstairs with a big box wrapped in sliver paper. When he placed it in Sara's arms, it felt surprisingly light.

"I wanted to give you this tonight, because I think you'd rather open it without Mike present," he said, sending a small thrill of curiosity and trepidation down Sara's spine.

"Why? What is it?"

He just raised his eyebrows at her. "It's a gift. The generally accepted custom is to open it to find out."

She smiled, but studied the box again before setting it on the floor and slipping a finger under the fold of the wrapping paper. It was about the size of the box the architectural scanner they'd ordered for the office came in; she suspected it had been repurposed. She took her time with the flap of the cardboard lid, then opened it to peer inside. Nested in the box like packing peanuts lay a huge pile of paper cranes. Her paper cranes. "Michael," she breathed. "From the gutter?"

"A little worse for the wear, I'm afraid," he said.

Kneeling on the floor, she reached her hand in; the cranes were brittle as autumn leaves, sharp at the creases. Most were watermarked, dusted with dirt and streaks of age-old mud. But they were dry, and feather-light in her hands, and on many, Michael's precisely blocked handwriting was still visible. Her eyes filled with tears. "Thank you," she managed.

He leaned in to look at them with her. "I dried them individually with your hair dryer," he confessed, and she turned from the box to him, raking a hand over his scalp as she embraced him.

"I wondered why you needed that," she laughed.

He shifted on the floor until his back hit the couch, and settled her against him, her backside nestled into the V of his legs, her shoulders against his chest. She drew each crane out of the box one by one, lifting each wing carefully. He read the messages with her over her shoulder, tucking her hair back from blocking his field of vision. "This could take awhile," he said dryly, after she'd read two.

She just reached for the next one. "You made all of these in Yemen? In that prison?" She felt herself skating toward questions she had about his experience there, but pulled them back. Not now.

Michael nodded against her neck. "I had time on my hands," he said.

"How did you do it?" She held a light blue crane with black ink that read, PLEASE TELL M HAPPY BDAY. An April crane, she thought with a pang. Which April, she didn't know.

He took the crane from her hands and toyed with it. "First, I had to get the paper, of course, and that involved paying a guy who could get just about anything. Like C-Note. He never could work out why I would be willing to trade Cuban cigars for basic printer paper."

"How did you get the cigars?" she asked.

"Well," he said slowly, "that involved negotiating cell phone privileges from a cellie of mine, which involved procuring him his favorite narcotics in exchange." Sara frowned at this, and without seeing her expression, Michael added, "I know," softly. He turned the crane in his hands, as though assessing its value and finding it worth whatever cost.

"And once you had the paper?"

"I had my own pen," he said more cheerfully, so that was the easy part." He grew quiet for a moment. "Knowing what to say was harder."

She had lifted another crane out of the box. This one contained three words, most of the letters smeared past recognition. She identified an I and a OV and OU, and filled in the blanks. She swallowed hard. "How did you mail them here?"

"Another contact, who visited a local inmate regularly. He came around every Tuesday, so on the Tuesdays I'd managed to procure an airmail stamp, I could slip it to him."

"And how did you get the stamp?"

"That part was tough," he admitted, as though the rest of it the process had been a piece of cake. "For the stamp, I needed a guy who forged currency, who in turn needed some of my paper. I traded it at a lower cost than the usual supplier, which meant risking pissing off my paper guy."

She closed her eyes, trying to absorb this. Her hands stilled in their pursuit of another crane.

"Are you okay?"

"Just hearing these answers is exhausting me." She ran her hand back through the box. "And there must be a hundred of these." The tears threatened her vision again. "You shouldn't have worried about what to write," she said softly. "I get it. I've got the message."

She felt his arms circle her waist, drawing her closer, and she allowed herself to lean back heavily into him. "I'm sorry I couldn't respond," she whispered. The knowledge that she hadn't, that he had been left to wonder, made her whole body ache, like one awful bruise. He turned her around by her shoulders, placed a finger experimentally to the wetness of her cheeks, and then replaced it with his lips. He kissed her gently, his touch as light as the cranes in her hands, until she ached with something other than regret. She untangled her legs from underneath her and straddled him, something low in her belly tightening with anticipation at the feel of his groin hard against her, ready for her. She kissed him deeply. He responded with a soft sigh against her mouth, and then she felt him guiding her backward, until her back sank into the carpet and he followed. They took their time, Michael insisting on soft, and slow, and tender under the muted luminosity of their simple holiday lights. He peeled her clothes off piece by piece, studying her in the red-green glow.

"Did you think about this, in that place?" she dared to ask, as he touched her softly.

Something tortured crossed his face in the dark. "Oh, Sara. Only when I could bear to." He placed a kiss to her bare breast, then her stomach, as he slid his weight on top of her. She felt a surge of something raw and visceral rise in her.

"I thought about it," she breathed. "About you…too often." If possible, she felt him grow harder against her. "How it's always been. So. Good."

He groaned an inaudible string of syllables in response to this confession. She felt his muscles tense as he abandoned his slow-and-easy stance for something much less restrained. Need, she decided. Single-minded need. She shifted under him, offering herself to him abruptly, and he entered her with an instinctive, almost carnal thrust. "Did it hurt?" he gasped.

For a second, she wasn't sure what he meant. She arched into him to meet his body. Of course it hadn't hurt. Oh. But before? Thinking about him? "Very badly," she admitted. "This helps though." She pulled him closer, until no space at all remained between their skin. He cradled her head in his hands, regaining control as he rocked into her smoothly, kissing her neck and face with that same featherlight touch. After what felt like a long time in suspended animation, she came with him almost as though floating on water, somewhere warmer and softer than her living room floor, carried along a current that took them far from this difficult Christmas with its brutal memories.

They stayed there, on the floor, tangled in each other, until Sara nearly succumbed to sleep and Michael whispered in her ear, "If we don't get up, Santa is going to put us on his naughty list when he comes down that chimney."

She smiled into his bare chest. Her entire body felt limp, and she was so, so tired. "Alright, but I think you'll need to carry me."

* * *

The house fairly burst at the seams. Michael moved through the barely controlled chaos of party decorations, children, tables set with platters of food, and friends gathered in conversation to find his brother on the opposite end of the living room. They clinked beer bottles, and settled on the bar stools at the edge of the kitchen to take in the scene. Sucre had turned the sound system to something upbeat and Latin, which Sheba gamely danced to, garnering appreciative applause. C-Note arrived with a festively-wrapped box, a gift for Mike. His son brought it excitedly over, and Michael watched as he opened an impressive variety of fireworks, none of which seemed appropriate for a child.

Sucre whistled. "Where do you find this stuff?" he asked, pawing through the box. "Half of this is illegal in most states."

"Man, how are you still questioning my ways?" C-Note answered, while Michael whisked the gift onto a high shelf. "Later, little man," C-Note staged whispered to Mike, who darted back across the room with a single permitted sparkler.

Lincoln laughed. "Nice work, getting the whole gang back together. Beats the hell out of that shitty gravesite outside Panama City."

Michael shook his head, grinning. "I'll drink to that." They sat in silence for a minute, and when he found themselves sitting alone again, he said simply, "Thank you, Lincoln."

"What for, Mike?"

"I can count on one hand the number of people who I know, without a sliver of doubt, would take a punch for me, take a bullet for me, hell, take care of my family for me. They're all in this room." He looked at his brother, who frowned into the lip of his beer bottle. "But you're at the top of that list. Always have been."

Lincoln exhaled shakily, then attempted to deflect the emotion that had settled between them with a wry smile. "Yeah, well, maybe you could do something for me someday. Try to even the score a bit, bro." The both laughed. From the other end of the room, Sara caught the sound and turned to look at them, a smile on her lips. Mike ran past again, trailing in the wake of two of Sucre's little girls, on the way to the back patio where the bounce house sat in the snow. Michael had spent hours shoveling out the space, an endeavor Sara had scolded him for, but now seemed well worth the trouble.

"So LJ's a full-fledged lawyer now, huh?" Michael said, catching his nephew's eye, where he lingered by the food.

Next to him, Lincoln laughed again. "Yeah, an attorney…can you believe that? Guess he wanted a more efficient way of bailing out his old man."

But his career choice made perfect sense to Michael: when he thought about it, LJ had been perhaps the first person affected by the weight of his father's death sentence, certainly before Veronica or Michael. "He'll make an amazing lawyer," he said sincerely. "Vee would have been proud."

Lincoln nodded, and they clinked bottles again, in memory. Sucre approached again, offering two fist bumps. He looked a bit older, as they all did, but in every way, he was the same man who'd shown Michael unwavering loyalty from Fox River, day one. "How's Maricruz?" Michael asked.

Predictably, Sucre beamed. "Too pregnant to make the trip," he said, "but good, good. I think it's a boy this time. She did that string thing, you know, where you dangle it above her belly, and yep, boy."

Michael smiled. "Well, congratulations. You've got to get yourself off those ships, then."

Sucre nodded. "I'm done with that, Papi. Pay was great, but too much time away from home, you know?"

"Yeah," Michael agreed. "I do."

He excused himself then, under the pretense of checking on the integrity of the bounce house snow foundation. Really, he just wanted to watch Mike using it, having fun with the other kids…children he never would have known if he hadn't decided to point the barrel of a handgun at the ceiling of a savings and loan. He found Alex out there, in the cold. He'd arrived through the back, greeting almost no one. Michael placed a hand to his arm; it felt thin, almost fragile.

"Michael," Mahone said simply. It was the first they'd seen each other since his return from Yemen, but Alex had never been one for embraces. He just shook his head with a slight smile. "How do you do it, always somehow coming out on top?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Michael answered it sincerely. "This time, it took awhile." The cocky assuredness they'd once slung at each other, along with their need to match wits, had been absent from their relationship for a long while. They both watched Mike, his friend Dylan, and the Sucre girls bouncing in the canvas castle for a moment. "How are you, Alex?" Michael really wanted to know. "How's Pam?"

Alex sighed. "She's getting by. So am I, I suppose. Because what else can you do? Life goes on." He paused, then clasped one hand on his shoulder. "Enjoy your family, Michael. Every day." There was no guile in his tone.

When Michael walked back through the patio slider, he saw Sara on the stairs, sitting on a step overlooking the gathering of people in their living room. She wore her hair loose, brushing her shoulders, a dress Michael hadn't seen before tonight hugging the curves at her hips and chest. She looked so appealing, it almost hurt. He climbed the stairs to join her.

"I got a little bit exhausted," she admitted with a smile. Her face looked slightly flushed from mingling through the crowd. She threaded her arm through his, and they both watched the lively scene in their normally tranquil living room. "Overwhelming, isn't it?"

He nodded. 'Overwhelming' was precisely the word. At the risk of allowing a morbid thought, Michael felt this night might be the closest he would ever come to experiencing his own funeral. All these people, who came here for him. Who had lent support to his wife, for so long. Who greeted his son with presents. Who loved him. He looked out over the living room again. "It's like I'm staring at the biggest stack of gifts I've ever seen, and they're all for us."

She looked at him a bit shyly. "Can I add one more to the pile?"

He nodded. "What is it?"

"I uh…" She looked down, a small smile tugging at one side of her mouth. "I have something to tell you."

A thought dawned. He hardly dared allow it to grow. "No…" He began to smile.

She peeked up at him. "Yes." She nodded as her smile widened. "I'm pregnant, Michael."

All the air left his lungs. He gasped a laugh. "Are you…are you sure?"

She nodded more vigorously. "I waited until I could be absolutely sure."

He wrapped her into his arms, not caring that he was crying into her new dress. He tightened his hold on her, his entire body humming with happiness, and they remained like that, locked together, until Fernando nudged him on the shoulder. "C'mon you two. Time for the toast, Papi."

They disentangled, but Michael felt unable to look away from Sara. He gaped at her as though he'd never seen her before. This was beyond a gift; it felt to Michael as though Sara were some type of miracle granter, giving him this second chance to be a father from the beginning.

Sucre silenced the crowd rather effectively with a well-timed whistle. He attempted to clink a plastic knife to his glass of malt whiskey, then gave up. "To the man who taught me the meaning of the word 'passion'," he said loudly, then immediately waved his arms, frowning. "Wait, wait! That didn't come out right!" Everyone laughed. "I mean, he taught me to follow my passion. That nothing is more important than family." He pointed to his kids, still trailed by Mike, and blew a kiss in their general direction. "And of course, to always have faith."

Glasses raised.

Lincoln stood up. "To having faith."

Michael tipped his glass to him, then looked at Sara. "To starting something new."


	11. Chapter 11

Month 3-4

It was nearly 3 am when Michael finally slipped into bed, curling into the warmth of Sara with a soft sigh. She'd been asleep for hours, and he didn't want to wake her, but couldn't stop himself from laying one hand lightly over the thin cotton of her Northwestern t-shirt to rest it gently over her abdomen. Pregnant. God, he still couldn't quite believe it.

"Is everyone gone?" she asked sleepily, eyes closed.

Michael gave himself a mental rebuke. He shouldn't have disturbed her. "All but Linc. He's crashing on the couch."

"Give him the guest room," she murmured.

"He doesn't care. It's fine." He kept his voice a low whisper. Maybe she could fall back asleep. Instead, she rolled over toward him, tucking her face into the crook of his arm. He ran a hand over her head, trailing his fingers through her hair. "I love you," he told her.

He felt her smile. "Are you happy? About…before?"

He let his palm rub a soft circle across her belly. It felt akin to coaxing a genie out of a lamp. "You have no idea how happy," he told her. He already had his first two wishes granted. Who would this third one turn out to be? He felt her smile again, her lips brushing his bicep. He turned his head to try to see her in the dark, but her face was still hidden and he didn't want to uproot her from his arm. "What about you?" he forced himself to ask, his heart suddenly in his throat. "Are _you_ good with this? Truly?" She'd talked big when she'd been willing to throw caution to the wind their first weeks together, but what if…

" _So_ good," she whispered, but she shifted to lay her head on the pillow to face him. "I'm nervous, too, though."

He stroked her upturned cheek with the pad of his thumb. "Why?"

"I know how hard it can be, Michael."

"You won't have to do it alone this time." They were still whispering, but his voice cracked like glass now.

She reached for his hand that still lay on her stomach, and threaded her fingers through his. She squeezed. "I know."

She remained quiet after that for several minutes, and Michael began to wonder if she'd fallen back asleep. "Sara?" he whispered experimentally.

"Hmm?"

"How long have you known?"

"For sure? Just a few weeks."

He bit back a grumble at this, but honestly, he was only annoyed with himself: how had he not noticed how tired she'd been? And while she'd been sick to her stomach, he'd bickered with her about holiday lights. As he mentally berated himself, she silently guided his hand back against her abdomen, laying her own on top of his.

"I'm pretty certain I'm eight weeks along," she told him.

Eight. He did the math in his head swiftly. "Due at the end of August, then?"

"Or early September. I'll find an OB, make an appointment, and we'll figure it out for sure…maybe tomorrow…." She trailed off, eyes closing again.

He kissed her temple. "Go to sleep."

She was out cold in seconds.

* * *

Now that Michael knew what to look for, Sara's condition was painfully obvious to him. She fell asleep before Mike most nights, dosing on the couch or jerking herself awake mid-sentence in his bedtime story, and she moved very tenderly in the mornings, attempting only to nibble on graham crackers between tiny sips of water. When Michael made his 'famous' (Mike's words) scrambled eggs she usually loved so much, she pivoted on the spot, sprinting from the kitchen for the bathroom. In fact, she retreated just as quickly from nearly any cooking smell, from meat grilling to coffee brewing.

"What _can_ you eat?" Michael asked her a bit desperately, after she'd shook her head at yogurt, cereal, granola, oatmeal, peanut butter, and toast one morning. She just shrugged.

"Bananas," Lincoln supplied the next day, when Michael called him to share their news. "God, just absolute pounds of bananas. All she ate for weeks."

"Really?" Sara said, when Michael shared this memory with her later. "How strange."

"You don't remember that?"

She pursed her lips, leaning against the kitchen counter (sink and stove completely scrubbed clean of food smells), then exhaled heavily. "Vaguely. Poor Lincoln," she said.

She looked distressed, and if there was one thing Michael was not going to allow during this pregnancy, it was distress. "He didn't mind, Sara."

She stared across the room blankly. Michael could tell she was very far away from him, in her mind. "I was just…God. Useless. He got me out of Miami, he got me back to Panama. He apparently fed me bananas, while I just…" She closed her eyes. "Just lay there, curled in a ball."

"He didn't mind helping," Michael managed again. He'd asked him to. He'd made him promise. Sara knew this, but Michael figured she didn't need to be reminded of that right now.

"He had his own pain," she challenged plaintively. "And I didn't care, Michael. I didn't care." Her voice cracked. "I never apologized to him for that."

He put his arms around her, and held her close to him until she loosened her hold on the counter and embraced him back with another sad sigh. "Do you know what he says about you, from that time? And from after, when Mike was born? Because I talk to him, you know. He tells me things."

She tensed again, but she needn't have. "I can imagine," she said darkly.

"He says you were exactly as he'd expected you to be, just as I'd expect: fierce, strong, smart, logical, nurturing, loving — "

"Michael —"

"What he has _not_ said, not once, is that you were useless, or selfish, or anything else you're going on about. And maybe you haven't noticed this, but my brother tells it like it is. I think he missed a few lessons on tact."

She exhaled hard, almost laughing, and he held her tighter, until her head came to rest on his shoulder. He nudged her. "Don't fall asleep on me," he teased, and she jabbed him in the arm.

"That part will get better soon," she promised. He kissed her forehead, extracting himself to reach for the car keys on the counter. "Where are you going?"

He raised one eyebrow at her. "I'm getting bananas, of course. Cases of bananas."

* * *

"It's normal for me," Sara insisted to her new obstetrician. "Nothing to worry about."

"And they say doctors don't make the best patients," Michael quipped.

Dr. Coleson quirked a smile in his direction, but addressed Sara again while consulting the chart that had followed her from Panama to the States. "But you had morning sickness this severe during your first pregnancy, too?"

She looked levelly at him, determined to speak candidly, whether she felt Michael really needed to hear all this or not. It couldn't be helped; she could no more banish him from this exam room than she could keep her breakfast down. And she wanted a good relationship with Dr. Coleson, who she'd picked rather carefully. "Yes," she said, "the nausea was bad then, too."

"From when, to when?"

She tried to think back, without really thinking back. Most of that time still remained a black abyss she'd rather not stumble into, even with Lincoln helping to fill in the gaps. "About week 6-14 or so?"

Dr. Coleson kept his face professionally passive, but she saw the hint of the frown around his mouth. "That long, hmm?" He flipped through her chart. "And weight loss for quite a while, too. Also high blood pressure during your first and second trimesters."

"I was under fairly significant stress." She carefully avoided looking at Michael, who she assumed was frowning at this understatement. She'd been in Miami-Dade part of that time, and then of course, there had been its aftermath. She'd never known, even after her father died, how physical grief could be. "Anyway, it's hard to gain weight when you can't keep anything down."

"Did you try Diclegis?"

"I didn't want to take anything." It had felt like a slippery slope, with that abyss so close. She chanced a glance at Michael, whose expression was carefully guarded. She'd told him this would be hard in ways he hadn't expected. She explained to him, "it's a delayed release pill, helps with nausea. Sometimes."

"Would you consider taking something now?" the OB asked. Michael looked at her hopefully.

"Maybe just ginger root," she hedged. "And vitamin B6?"

"Vitamins only help if they stay in your stomach," Michael pointed out. "Plus, I hate seeing you so miserable."

"We can give it a few weeks," her doctor offered. "Try the natural remedies for the time being. But I want to change something up if you haven't gained any weight by the end of your first trimester. Agreed?"

Michael and Sara both nodded reluctantly, for opposite reasons.

Dr. Coleson rose from his swivel chair, as though dusting his hands of this issue. "Alright. With that settled, let's examine you, Sara." He turned to don his gloves while she smoothed the flimsy paper exam smock over her stomach. "You know the drill…heels in the stirrups, please. Dad can stay, or step out, up to you."

He said this to Sara, but Michael answered swiftly, "I'm here for everything."

Sara smiled. "It's fine. Whatever he wants."

She lay back as the doctor readied his equipment and warmed his hands before saying, "You'll feel just a little discomfort now." She stared up at the ceiling, releasing a deep breath slowly as his fingers followed the invasive metal speculum into her body. Michael blinked, his mouth falling open slightly, and the distraction of his expression proved useful. It occurred to Sara that he'd probably never been present for a gynecological exam before.

"It'll be over before you know it," she told Michael with a wry smile, earning her a chuckle from Dr. Coleson.

"Uh huh. Okay." He stared at her face, while she tried to pass for relaxed as a man she'd just met palpated her cervix.

"Alright, all done," Coleson announced, and she scooted back on the exam table to sit up into a slightly more dignified position. "Looking good, measuring at eight weeks on the nose, just as you thought." The doctor looked amused to have to admit to Sara's accuracy. "I'll see you both in about a month, at which time you'll have moved the needle on that weight scale, right?" Michael nodded solemnly, as though he could ensure this happened by will alone.

Sara just sighed. "See you four weeks."

* * *

They sat Mike down with them in the living room after he'd finished his homework one weeknight at the end of January. Sara would be showing soon, and besides, the kid didn't miss a thing. Michael wanted this news to come straight from them, not second-hand or deduced by his impressive observational skills. Sara tucked Mike against her chest, his back to her front, and he settled against her casually. It was a familiar snuggle-thing the two of them did that always made Michael's heart ache in a painfully happy way.

"We have something we want to tell you," Sara said, her cheek at his ear.

She didn't say a 'surprise'; Michael knew Mike didn't like surprises much. "What?" he asked. "Are we going to Baja again?"

"I think we should definitely go to Baja again sometime," Michael agreed, "but that's not what we want to tell you." He hesitated, suddenly unsure how to go on.

Sara said, "I think maybe you've noticed how I haven't been feeling all that great lately?" Michael saw Mike's jaw tense. His fingers, previously dancing up Sara's arms, stilled.

"Yes." He turned to study Sara, his face alarmed.

"I'm fine, Mike," she told him swiftly. "I'm _going_ to be perfectly fine, but I don't feel too well right now, because, uh…" She cleared her throat. "I'm going to have a baby."

She blushed slightly, which Michael found unexpected and endearing. Mike, however, just stared at her like this was the strangest thing he'd ever heard. Michael held his breath. After he'd processed this, Mike would want answers on probably a variety of subtopics. But when he finally found his voice, he asked perhaps the only question Michael hadn't been expecting. "Why?"

Sara hadn't expected this one, either. Before talking to Mike, the two of them had tried to prepare themselves for his curiosity: 'How' they were prepared to skate around. 'When' they were ready to answer. 'Who' they were looking forward to speculating about…maybe a brother, maybe a sister. But _'why'_? "Well, Mike," Sara stammered, "because I…um…your father and I love each other, you know that, and…"

"No, I mean, why now, when you told me definitely _no_ before."

She blinked. "What?"

"Before," Mike repeated. "When Carter's mom had a baby and he got a little brother and I said…," he turned to draw Michael into this exchange, as though suddenly remembering he had to catch him up to speed, "I said, I want a baby brother, too, and you…" he turned back to direct a serious gaze on Sara, "said no. That you didn't want any other baby after me."

"Uh…well that was because…um…" She flung a look at Michael, and yes, he could fill in the blanks she was shooting at him, but what was he supposed to say? Y _our mom didn't want any baby but mine?_ Just saying it in his head made his blood instantly heat as his eyes locked with hers, dark and equally heated on his own. He struggled to pull back from the sudden energy swimming between them. That, he wanted to say, is why, Mike. And how.

He heard Sara end lamely, "I can't believe you remember that, Mike." Truly, their son's excellent recall wasn't terribly convenient at the moment.

Michael tried, "The thing is, there are right times for people to have babies, and wrong times. Before, when I wasn't back yet, wasn't the right time."

Mike considered this logic, studying Michael almost sternly. "Do you want a baby now, too?"

"With your mom, yes." He decided he'd better not look at her again. "Very much."

"Because then you'll be this baby's dad?" Slowly, it dawned on Michael where this line of questioning might lead, and he felt a swift wave of trepidation.

"Yes, just like I'm your dad." He swallowed. _Please don't go where I think you're going, Mike._

Mike went there. "But then why do you need another baby when you just got me?" His chin quivered as Michael felt the floor drop out beneath him. His entire body felt doused in ice water, like he'd just been the unlucky victim of a dunk tank.

"Mike, _baby_ ," Sara objected.

But Michael couldn't let her field this for him. It felt vitally important that he answer his son. "Michael?" he said solemnly, and the invocation of his full name worked. Mike's eyes flicked immediately back from Sara to him. Michael took Mike's small face in both hands, sandwiching his cheeks gently with his palms. He spoke to him with deliberate care. "You are the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me. I wake up every day scarcely believing I actually get to be your dad. It feels like the most wonderful dream, one I get to have again every night." Mike's chin quivered again, like maybe he still wanted to cry but in a different way. "And I just keep thinking, if Mike is _this_ amazing, this smart and this special, probably his brother or his sister will be…I don't know…at least half as good? What do you think?" He gave Mike this statistical challenge with a hint of a smile.

Mike's cheeks lifted under Michael's fingertips in a quick, incredulous laugh, and he released his face. "Dad! C'mon. At least half as good, but probably more. Probably really good, I think!"

Michael exhaled, relief sluicing through him. "With you as a brother? Definitely."

"Really, really good! Maybe great. A great baby." Mike spun to Sara, looked at her in surprise, and patted her face. "Don't cry, Mom. It's going to be a great baby!"

Sara looked like she couldn't decide between kissing Michael hard and shaking him for such a near disaster. Impulsively, he pulled her to him and pressed his mouth to hers, swallowing her rise of protest at such a display, then laughing at Mike's ' _eww!_ ' Out of his peripheral vision, he saw his son try to make a leap for the floor, and snagged him in one long arm, sweeping him back to land on his lap. He pulled both Sara and Mike into a tangled, squirmy hug. "Let's have a really, really great baby," he told them both, then laughed at Mike's muffled cheer of agreement.

* * *

Once Mike was on board, the questions Michael had been anticipating came hard and fast. When would the baby be here? Where was it now? Why couldn't he see it in Mom's stomach?

"Correct anatomical terms only, please," Sara had insisted, overhearing this one.

Okay, why couldn't he see it in Mom's _uterus_? When would he see it? And how did it get in there in the first place?

"Uh, Dr. Mom with the 'correct anatomical terms' can answer that one," Michael told Mike while packing his lunch.

"That's okay. I'll just ask Maddy. She says she knows."

 _Nope._ "Never mind, I'll explain," Michael amended swiftly. He thought fast. "Uh, so you know how you learned about DNA in Mr. House's class, with the tree root? Well, men have DNA and women do too, and when they combine, it can make a new person. It's just chemistry, Mike, simple as that." There. Easy. He felt quite proud of himself for navigating this so well.

"But how does it combine? Isn't the DNA in your body?"

 _Shit. I give up. Just ask Maddy._ "What?" Michael said aloud, to buy time.

It worked. The timer beeped on Mike's watch, signaling car pool pick-up. The watch had been Michael's idea, to ensure a lack of tardies, and he now decided to congratulate himself a second time. "It's okay! I'll ask you later," Mike called from the front hall.

Yes. _Muc_ h later, please.

Alone in the house, he went to his computer to start work, but instead found himself Googling, 'how to explain reproduction to your child'. The only advice for parents of first graders involved either storks or vague religious explanations, or alarmingly, a combination of both, and Michael didn't see Mike buying either explanation, especially given that storks were not native to upstate New York. On an impulse, he called Lincoln. "Who told you where babies come from?" he asked him without preamble.

"Ah Jesus, Mike. Did you miss that whole talk? Because I did my best, but _c'mon_. You were a smart kid. I thought you'd catch on when I knocked up Lisa."

"I'm serious Linc. What do I say to Mike?"

There was silence on the line for a long moment. "Nothing, dumbass. He's six."

"With Sara pregnant, he's asking questions."

"Then you make shit up."

His brother's succinct answer to his problem was so…so…Linc-like, Michael felt his anxiety dissolve into a melted puddle. Why did he always overthink everything? "Thanks, man," he laughed. "That's exactly what I needed to hear."

Later that evening, Mike observed Sara's careful avoidance of the night's dinner menu. "I think just some fruit," she said, about as cheerfully as she could.

"You need to eat real food, Mom, for our baby," he chastised.

Michael watched her draw up all the patience she had left in her after a long day of examinations and hospital rounds. "Fruit is real food, Mike."

"But we're trying to have a really great baby, Mom." He tucked into his own chicken and vegetables as though leading by example.

Michael couldn't help but smile. "We are doing our part," he couldn't resist teasing.

Sara hovered in the living room like the dining room contained biohazards instead of sustainably procured, carefully prepared, organic food. "Well, can you tell this great baby to take it a bit easier on me?"

Mike thought about this. "Carter's big brother says there was this TV show with a zombie baby who killed its mother…Or maybe zombies ate the mother. I don't know but it was so gross. So it could be worse. You could have that."

"That sounds ridiculous," Michael said firmly.

"I haven't ruled it out," Sara said testily.

" _Our_ baby is awesome," Mike declared again.

"Yes, everything is awesome," Sara said absently, staring down an apple like it might bite her instead of the other way around. For some reason Michael didn't understand, this statement made Mike laugh, and add in a burst of song, " _Everything is cool when you're part of a team._ Right, Dad?" he added, still giggling.

Michael looked at him in confusion, and Mike gave him one of his patented, Dad! looks. This finally made Sara smile. "Your father is a little out-of-date on his pop culture kid movie references."

This turned Mike on a new tangent. He loved it when he had knowledge or stories to impart to Michael, instead of the other way around. "After dinner, we should watch the LEGO Movie, or, maybe Guardians of the Galaxy."

Sara toyed with the apple some more. "Which Guardians movie?"

"Both, Mom." Before she could tell him there wasn't time for so many hours in front of the TV, he added, "'Cause in the second one, there's a dad who comes back!" His face fell a bit. "But he's evil. Oh! But there's a baby! Baby Groot!" He looked at Michael, who felt like Mike had begun talking in a foreign language. "Now _that'_ s an awesome baby."

* * *

At Sara's 12 week appointment, she'd managed to gain two hard-won pounds, which didn't seem like enough to Michael, but won her favor with Dr. Coleson. "Must have been Lincoln's banana tip," she quipped, her relief at avoiding a prescription for the anti-nausea meds obvious. Sometimes, Michael chastised himself, he let himself forget how seriously Sara took her sobriety. The pills would have in no way compromised that, as far as he was concerned, but clearly, she saw it differently.

By 14 weeks, she'd returned to the dinner table, the tightness around her jaw as she constantly fought queasiness mercifully absent. She was showing now, provided you knew what to look for, and Michael looked often, his eye drawn to the slight rise of her belly under loose shirts and tunics and sweatshirts. She'd need to shop for maturity clothes soon. He'd never seen her more pregnant than this, had never seen her this pregnant, and it gave him a thrill of undiluted euphoria every time he caught sight of the new curves of her body.

"I'll do the dishes," she offered one night after eating an actual, full meal, and then he knew the nausea really was gone.

"Thank you," he acknowledged, with a kiss to the back of her neck, thinking he'd use the time to check email in the office, but instead, he found himself coming up behind her at the sink, wrapping his arms around her, unable to resist palming the swell of her stomach under her blouse. She chuckled softly, her hands still outstretched to drip into the sink.

"I'm so glad your appetite is back," he said, his chin on her shoulder.

She leaned back against him until the soft curve of her backside pressed into his groin. Mmm. Turning her head upward, she placed a slow kiss against the crook of his neck. "Other things are back, too," she told him.

"Well, that's interesting," he noted. He slid his hands to her hips and drew her against him more firmly. It had been awhile. Not that he minded, not that he'd complain, but…still.

He waited very patiently through homework time, bath time, reading time, and bedtime for Mike, and even then, he told himself: maybe not, let her lead. After all, she got tired so fast, so easily. But after turning out Mike's light, she appeared in the doorway of the office. "Maybe we can turn in early, if you're not too busy?"

He really shouldn't get his hopes up. "Are you tired?"

"Not yet."

The room was dim, but even in the weak light of the computer monitor, he knew that glance she was shooting him. Sexual hunger was a very good look on his wife. He scrambled out of his chair. "After you."

In their bed, her body felt new. Michael didn't say this; it would sound ridiculous, and maybe even cause Sara to shed this newfound enthusiasm he was currently so enjoying, but it was true. He marveled at her breasts: heavier, fuller, his palm no longer able to completely cup them. Lower, the soft swell of her abdomen, the size of a small cantaloupe under his touch, sent an alarming portion of his blood southward. Was it wrong, that her pregnant state turned him on so much? And if so, he thought with a wry smile against her belly, did he want to be right?

Sara was turned on too…electrically so. He could feel the tension humming off her skin, how badly she wanted him, and this awareness set what blood remained in the rest of his veins on fire. God, how did she do it? "You will never understand what you do to me, Sara," he growled at her, and she writhed in his arms, caught somewhere along their hazy spectrum of sexual frustration and satisfaction.

"I think I have an idea," she gasped.

After teasing both of them about as much as they could bear, he slid a hand below her stomach and between her legs, and his eyes widened in surprise. Another new development: he'd never felt her so wet. Ever. This brought another groan to his throat and another hard, almost violent swell of blood to his groin, and he stroked two fingers into her experimentally. She shuddered with pleasure. The thought of how she'd feel right now, if he entered her, nearly ended everything right then and there.

Think about anything else, anything, anything, anything at all, he ordered himself as he added a third finger, followed by the pad of his thumb at her moan of encouragement. ANYTHING AT ALL. He curled his fingers the way he knew she liked, stroking her, her body hot and slick and swollen, until, much more quickly than he'd anticipated, she ground into his hand with a soft cry. His fingers still deep inside her, he felt the tremor of her orgasm for what seemed like an exquisitely long time.

He kissed her belly, which had grown interestingly rigid, while she caught her breath, then he slid up her body to whisper, "Think you can do that again for me?"

She nodded mutely, and he rolled onto her — she liked it like this, liked him on top — and then he suddenly stopped, lifting his weight abruptly off her with his elbows. He should probably…

Sara tugged him back down. "Michael, it's fine. You're good."

"I think I should…" he shifted off her again, acutely aware of the rise of her stomach. "Um, maybe just…" He could please her again with his hands, or his mouth. He didn't need to…well, he desperately needed to, but he could deny himself. He knew he could.

"Michael," she growled. "Please trust me. I'm fine. Baby's fine. Please."

She must have seen that he'd gone frozen in indecision, because she took matters into her own hands, wrapping her legs around him and rolling them both over to straddle him. Before he could form any opinion on this move other than yessss, she'd guided him into her, and he was lost. She was still so wet, it was actually hard for her to move against him with any reliable rhythm, and when she could tell he was too far gone to argue, she rolled him partway back on top of her, allowing him to rock into her from the side. She was right: it was so good this way, he nearly forgot to breathe, panting in hard gasps against her shoulder. He braced against her knee to thrust into her the way he knew she needed, and very quickly, he felt her come again, the warmth of her body tightening around him in a long quaking, pulsing spasm.

He'd like to think he was the kind of man who could last long enough to give her a third one of these, but there was no riding this out. He came in her on a rough groan that he knew was far too loud, but couldn't hold back. She muffled his mouth with hers, smiling into his lips. "Shhh," she laughed.

They lay tangled together for a moment, stilling while they listened for any sign that they'd woken Mike, then, when all remained quiet outside their door, Michael settled Sara against his chest, brushing her hair back from her damp forehead. "That was kind of incredible," he whispered.

He felt her smile against him. "I'd heard pregnancy orgasms could be amazing…something about the extra hormones. But I had no idea."

He trailed his fingers across her bare shoulder and arm. "It wasn't like that the first time?" he asked absently. Everything else had been so similar: the nausea, the fatigue.

She lifted her head slightly to look at him. "I didn't have the opportunity to learn," she pointed out. "I'm guessing you'll be glad to know this was one thing your brother did _not_ do for me, during Mike's pregnancy."

Michael shuddered. "Jesus, Sara. Don't even joke like that." She laughed at the look on his face.

"And I have to admit," she added coyly, "my hands aren't as talented as yours." She bravely let him watch her face turn pink.

"Jesus," he muttered again roughly, his groin already tightening anew. He pulled her closer, his hand brushing her bare behind. Maybe she'd get that third orgasm tonight after all.

* * *

They waited way too long to bring up Sara's pregnancy at Dr. Kate's office. They'd reduced their visits to once monthly, so by the time Sara finally shared the news at their next couples session, she relayed it almost like an apology, flinching in anticipation at their therapist's reaction. She hadn't been wrong to do so: Kate gaped at them both, stunned.

"Are you alright?" Michael asked, the corner of his mouth twitching at this role reversal. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I'm guessing I'm too late for that," Kate mused, shaking her head. Sara noticed she was smiling, albeit in a slightly dazed manner. "Honestly," she said, still at a loss, looking between the two of them. "I don't even know where to start."

"Congratulations is customary," Michael suggested, laughter still dancing in his eyes. He was in a perpetually good mood these days; only now that Sara felt so much better did she realize how much he'd worried over her lack of appetite and fatigue.

Kate extended her hands to them both, palms open. "Congratulations," she told them, but even before the word landed, Sara suspected a second agenda. "You have just chosen your next therapy topic: Sara's pregnancy with Mike."

Sara sat back somewhat smugly. That's was alright…between her OB exam and various moments that had arisen naturally in the past weeks, she'd already shared quite a bit about her first pregnancy. "I've told Michael a lot already," she started, but Kate interrupted.

"No, no," she corrected mildly. "I meant, I want to hear from Michael, about his memories of those months."

Oh. Well, that would be harder.

Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat, a common gesture for him in this office. He exhaled through his nose.

"That would have been right after you'd made the deal to get Sara out of Miami-Dade and back to Panama," Kate reminded him, as though any of them needed to consult a calendar.

"Well," Michael countered, "Sara's pregnancy began before that." He looked at her across the couch. "I was so happy," he told her. "Just as I am now."

She swallowed tightly. She remembered. She also remembered the nose bleeds, though, each one casting a new cloud on their blue sky existence after their exoneration.

"At the time, though," Michael said slowly, as though reading her mind, "I thought there was a very good possibility I might die, at least in the next year or so, either way."

Sara knew his deal with Poseidon (in this context, she never could call him Jacob) had included the additional surgeries that had ultimately saved his life, but she didn't want to think about that now. Or ever, really. Because when she did, she had to weigh Michael's health against her happiness. While she knew with certainty that had she been privy to the choice before him, she would have chosen the same as he, she would have arrived at this choice for different reasons. Specifically, for his safety, not hers. She couldn't think of his faked death in Miami-Dade, and his consequent departure from her life, without also feeling grateful for his heath, a dichotomy that plagued her regularly. _Damn you, Dr. Kate. You're good._

"How did that affect your decision?" Kate asked Michael now.

Sara scrambled to catch back up…the nose bleeds. The mortality he'd faced. Michael answered easily, "It made it simple for me. If I wouldn't be around long anyway, if Sara was going to have to watch me die, I'd rather she not see it, and live in freedom."

"But then you _didn't_ die," Kate pointed out.

"Yes," Michael conceded slowly. "That, I didn't quite anticipate." He smiled somewhat ruefully, looking at a fixed spot on the wall over Sara's shoulder. "Some days, I wished I had."

Sara looked at him sharply. "That's a ridiculous thing to say."

"Not really," he returned. "When you're dead, it's over and done, but for me…it felt just as over, but I got fragments of what I was missing, teasing glimpses, like spotting pockets of scenery through a bank of cloud from an airplane window. I had to live knowing you were mourning me, knowing I could fix it, but knowing I wouldn't. Knowing that eventually, life would go on for you, while I remained a ghost. Knowing that I wanted that for you, but also knowing that when it happened, I'd disappear just a little bit more. Counting the weeks, calculating exactly how pregnant you were, every day, and…missing it." This seemed to be the worst part, the part that hurt most.

"You won't miss it this time," she told him quietly. It was all she could offer.

"I can't get that back, though," he confided, his voice just over a whisper. "That time with you, waiting for Mike. It's gone."

Because Sara could say nothing to this, Dr. Kate said, "Let's talk about what that looked like for you. What you did instead, while Sara tried to make a life for herself in Panama, pregnant."

"I worked," Michael said darkly. "I paid my debt for Sara's freedom." He cast a glance at Sara, and she tried not to look tortured. "And it was worth it, every day." He pinched his eyes shut, remembering. "I always kept an app set to Panamanian time, so I'd know exactly…I don't know…just what day it was, I guess. Which week and month, leading up to the due date. But then…" he trailed off for a moment, his gaze casting him somewhere very far away. "I was sent to Geneva, for surgery, in late March, and I was out of it for about a week. I thought I'd missed it." He said this flatly, but he didn't need to clarify what 'it' was.

Mike's birth. "Did you? Miss it?" Sara asked.

"Yes," he said, still sounding painfully far away. "But not because I was in Geneva. I was in Russia that day, orchestrating the escape of an American spy out of a gulag in Volgograd." He closed his eyes again, and let a few tears run unchecked down his face before he swiped at them. "It didn't seem worth it that day. Not even for your freedom. I'm that selfish."

"You wanted to see Mike," Sara said. This didn't make him selfish.

"I wanted to see both of you, so desperately badly."

She thought of how she'd felt that day, wanting equally desperately for him to be there, so she could show him what she'd managed to accomplish, even with her heart torn in two. Maybe they hadn't been so very far apart, after all. "We actually were kind of together that day," she told him, "caught in the same misery."

He sighed shakily, giving her hand a squeeze across the couch. "After that, I started sneaking peeks at you both." He turned to Dr. Kate. "I'm only human."

Kate actually looked close to tears herself. "I really should stay out of this," she said sheepishly, reaching for a tissue from the box on the table, "but can I just say…I'm so glad you're having another baby together."

Sara looked to Michael in surprise. At Kate's statement, she could see traces of his earlier jovial mood returning to the corners of his mouth. "I think we broke our therapist," he told her solemnly, and for the first time since entering the office, Sara let herself laugh.


	12. Chapter 12

Month 6-11

At week 20, Sara had an ultrasound, followed by an amniocentesis. The more information the better, they both agreed, except for one thing: they'd decided they didn't need to know the sex of the baby.

"It doesn't matter this time," Sara said, feeling out the statement on her tongue and deciding it was true. The fierce drive for a boy she'd experienced during her first pregnancy had faded to an equal fondness for either pink or blue. As the technician squeezed the goop on her stomach and slid the wand over her skin, she found her gaze unexpectedly torn in two directions: on the monitor, of course, for her first glimpse of their second child, but also on Michael's face, watching the monitor. She was pretty sure her feminist card would be revoked should she admit it, but she felt an almost primal pride in knowing she was giving him this, that she was again having his baby.

Michael's reaction didn't disappoint. He looked almost stunned as he watched the monitor, his mouth open in a half-O of awe. He kept splaying his fingers against his pant leg, as though he wanted to touch the screen but managed to stop himself at the last second. This brought a bubble of laugher to Sara's chest, which she just managed to squelch. "Look at the heart," he breathed, where it fluttered like she imagined a quivering hummingbird's would, on the screen. "Look at that, Sara."

She looked, and her own heart constricted tightly. He squeezed her hand.

The amnio was less fun, but Sara had insisted. She was seven years older than during her last pregnancy, she's reminded Michael the previous week.

He'd scoffed. "Not feeling your age, are you?"

She'd risen gingerly from the chair she'd deposited herself into, feeling something cramp, tendons she'd never noticed before stretching taut across her belly, and said, "A little bit, if you must know."

The testing all came back clean, normal, negative…all the words they wanted to hear, and back at home, Michael flipped between the printed images of their child he'd snagged as souvenirs and a pamphlet they'd been given at the appointment. Birth Plan Options something or other. Sara had already tried to throw it away twice…she'd learned you could plan for birth all you wanted, but you'd never really be prepared anyway.

Michael, however, studied the tri-fold glossy print religiously. "I have a sinking feeling that if you were anti-nausea medication in the first trimester, you're going to resist all these handy pain management options in labor and delivery?" he asked, pointing to a bullet-pointed list of narcotic-laced anesthetics.

Sara had already looked at it…it read like a junkie's Christmas list. She didn't even bother to glance at it now. "Natural birth worked fine with Mike, and it will be fine this time too."

"I don't even get a vote?" he asked. His tone remained light, but she felt the rise of his resentment as tangibly as the spring sunlight burning through the kitchen window.

She sighed. "You get a vote," she conceded, "but I get more." At least her feminism card was tucked back in her pocket where it belonged, she thought. "It's my body, Michael. I decide."

She considered the case closed, which made her wonder later if she had any business claiming she knew her husband at all. "I just want to be of help to you," he argued, during his next affront a few days later. He'd read way too many books by this point, which she'd warned him not to do. Right now, for instance, he flipped between What to Expect When You're Expecting and something called Birth Your Way. Whose way, exactly? Sara thought wryly. "It seems this is going to be really intense, Sara," he pointed out, and she bit back a comment about understatements. He read a line he'd snagged out of the book. "Medically prescribed anesthetics can relax the mother-to-be, allowing for a calmer birth." He looked up hopefully. "It's okay to use drugs administered by a doctor the way they're intended to be used."

She wouldn't abide a lecture on drug use in either medical or recreational form. "Do you seriously think I don't know that, Michael?"

"Maybe in theory," he mumbled.

"Why don't you go back to your books on meditation, Lamaze, and visualization," she suggested. "You're welcome to learn any or all of those techniques, if you want to help me." It was a warm afternoon, and she'd pulled her hair up into a messy bun, but tendrils still escaped to stick to the back of her neck. She swiped at them irritably. She was tired and uncomfortable as spring slid into summer, and when he stepped behind her to tuck the errant hair up into the elastic band at the top of her head, she stubbornly refused to thank him.

But then he rubbed her shoulders, digging his long fingers expertly into the corded muscle that always seemed to knot up these days. She sighed. "You have to be on my side, Michael," she said simply, because that was really all there was to it. He had to be.

He placed a kiss to the back of her neck. "I am," he agreed softly. "Always."

* * *

Mike's soccer season began in late spring, bringing with it a practice and game schedule Michael thought more closely resembled an MLS player's than a newly-turned seven-year-old's. "We might as well set up a tent on that field and live there," he noted with a lift of one eyebrow, flipping through pages of rosters, calendars, and snack schedules. "Does Mike really have to go to all of this?"

"Welcome to youth sports," Sara told him. Mike just gave him a categorical 'yes'. When he wasn't practicing, he was up in his room, watching YouTube videos of professional matches. No, Michael amended, not watching. _Studying._

"See how the shooter's glance flicks to the corner of the net before the PK?" Mike asked him one afternoon, when Michael had looked at the screen over his son's shoulder and asked what was so engrossing.

Mike replayed the movement, and Michael saw it. "Yes."

"And how he's favoring his back foot as he lines up the ball? He's going to kick left. Watch." As Mike predicted, the player kicked left while the goalkeeper dove in the wrong direction. "How did he miss that?" Mike wondered, eyes narrowing at the image of the pro goalie now on the ground, head in his hands. "It was obvious."

To prove his point, he dragged out his soccer net from the recesses of the garage, donned his gloves, and challenged Michael to kick the ball at him over and over. He wasn't very good at it - Michael, not Mike - and he tried not to take offense when he was replaced pretty early in the season by Dylan. Michael watched his son leap at ball after ball, his friend testing him with arbitrary angles and strategic kicking techniques. Michael really didn't know much about soccer, but a nearly 95% save percentage seemed pretty good.

Mike's first game day proved equally illuminating. They arrived at the assigned field just a bit late, and for some reason, the sight of Mike jumping out of the car, pulling on his gloves as he ran to join his team, brought obvious relief to the faces of the fellow parents on the sidelines. By the third time some dad stopped Sara to jokingly scold her for scaring everyone, the corner of her mouth twitched. "So here's the thing you may not have realized yet," she told Michael in an undertone. "Mike is kind of a crazy good goalkeeper."

Sara tried to claim this was the reason for her own popularity among the parents on the sidelines, but Michael was less convinced. She'd thrown on jeans and some sort of maternity tee that hugged the curve of her six-month belly, her hair pulled back hastily in a ponytail threaded through a baseball cap (their tardiness had been Mike's fault, as he searched for his lucky socks), but even dressed so causally, she looked exceptionally beautiful, really, watching the game in the spring sunlight. _This is my favorite time of pregnancy, I think,_ she'd told him just the other day, and admiring her during lulls in the action on the field, he agreed. The sixth month definitely suited her.

She didn't stand with the other mothers, Michael noticed, preferring to talk about the game with the wanna-be coach type fathers. "The dads are nicer," she said, and Michael rolled his eyes. Of course they were.

She caught his look. "I think they all know I'm spoken for, Michael," she laughed, laying a hand on her stomach. Michael didn't consider himself to be the boorish type of man who felt the need to lay possessive claim to a woman, but he had to admit her words gave him a surge of primal pleasure. He ran his palm over the swell of her belly as well, before threading his fingers through hers. "They all love Mike, anyway," she added. This seemed true enough, as they openly discussed his abilities to read the shots he saved in the goal with blatant admiration.

Michael glanced back at the other women, talking amongst themselves more than they watched the action of the game. He thought about Dakota's mom and Maddy's mom and the gossip they so seemed to enjoy, and he could hardly blame Sara for keeping her distance. He had half a mind to storm over there to shoo them away like the scattering of a flock of pesky birds. Luckily, the other half of his mind knew this would constitute a gross overreaction. Anyway, Sara could fight her own battles.

At halftime, Michael noticed Mike remained on the field getting a one-on-one talking to from the coach, clipboard in hand, while the other kids ate oranges. "Is he in trouble?" he asked the closest dad. Sara had gone in search of a restroom.

The man laughed, but not in a mean way. "Hardly. At the U8 level, that kid's the only player the coach bothers to discuss strategy with." He held out his hand, introducing himself as Sam's dad, pointing to a boy trying to balance an orange slice on his head while another boy smashed it into pulp in his hair.

"Michael shook his hand. Somewhat sheepishly, he indicated toward Mike, still huddled with the coach. "He's mine." The wording, completely arbitrary, made him feel pleasantly possessive of his family again. "It's why I wondered."

"You're Scofield's father?"

Michael forced his smile to stay in place. _Here we go._ "Yes. Uh, you probably know my wife, Sara."

The man's face positively lit up. "Sara's great." _Of course she is._ The guy turned kind of wistful, then, a look Michael didn't really appreciate, after mentioning his wife, but then he said, "Mike is an incredible player."

This simple comment hit Michael squarely in the chest, landing from two fronts: for once, he - and his - had been recognized in a positive context, his name sliding off the tongue on a compliment. More importantly, that context was Mike. The concept of feeling pride over the athletic prowess of his child was a new one on Michael, one he decided he liked. "Really?"

The man waxed on about Mike's instincts and agility and some such thing, while Michael stood there, reeling. Five minutes ago, he truly hadn't cared whether or not Mike could snatch a leather ball out of the air before it hit a net, but now? He seemed to care quite a lot. Given the myriad of ways in which Mike deserved paternal pride, this one seemed downright silly to Michael. And yet…"Do you think he should try out for the elite team next year?"

"Oh, absolutely." More details followed, include information on age cut-offs and try-out dates, but then Sara was back at his side, looking at him a bit oddly.

"You haven't drunk the punch, have you?" she asked.

"He's really good," he accused Sara. "You didn't tell me."

She just smiled. Michael flicked a glance behind them, where the cluster of moms still chatted. Maybe they weren't talking about them at all, he thought now. Maybe if Sara walked up to them, they wouldn't fall silent…maybe they'd offer a compliment on her kid in the goal and then go back to whatever engrossed them. And maybe that 'whatever' wasn't them. It was possible.

Play started again, and now, Michael watched riveted, trying to memorize the line-up and decode the coach's strategy, which honestly, seemed lacking. The star forward for the opposing team shot at the goal time and again, each kick crossing unimaginatively from the right, and after the third time Mike blocked the shot, Mike's coach called out across the pitch, praising Mike enthusiastically.

Michael looked sidelong at Sara. "Did _you_ play soccer as a kid?"

She laughed at him. "No, Michael, I did not play soccer. I rode horseback and took ballet, which, if I remember correctly, my father declared a 'dismal failure'."

"Maybe you missed your calling," Michael mused. "The reading of the players' tells I'll claim, but that?" He pointed toward Mike, now charging the ball outside the goal box, a look of abject determination on his face, "is all you."

"Well," she said slowly, "maybe by some miracle, Mike managed to get the best of me."

"Lucky kid," Sam's dad interjected, and this time, Michael was certain he didn't appreciate his implication.

* * *

On a uneventful weeknight in June, Sara called everyone to dinner to see only Mike arrive at the table. "Where's your dad?"

"Still in the office," Mike said. He hovered by his place at the table, not quite sitting down.

"Well, can you tell him to come eat?" She had almost two full months left to go in this pregnancy, and it wasn't a good sign that already, the idea of walking the twenty steps to the office seemed exhausting.

Mike hesitated, and Sara realized he looked concerned. "He closed the door," he said, then added, "Because he was really yelling at someone."

She glanced toward the office, and could see that indeed, Michael had shut the door behind him. "Alright, well, we'll start, and I'm sure he'll be in soon."

And he was. He sat down just a few minutes later, apologized for working late, asked Mike for a progress update on his school book report due the next day, and made small talk about an article he'd read on black holes that drew his son into animated conversation until dessert. But under it all, Sara could detect a tension that hummed like a live wire. Nothing outright alarming, really, but something to cautiously sidestep.

Of course, avoidance wasn't really Sara's style, so when Mike ran up the stairs to finish his book report, she didn't waste words. "What's wrong?"

For a moment, she saw Michael's favorite mask start to slide over his face, the one that kept everything tucked away from her for safekeeping, but then he he made a concerted effort to look her in the eye. "Come with me?" he requested. Therapy, Sara decided, just might be worth every penny.

In his office, he handed her a piece of paper…a copy of an email. She glanced down. It was a bid for Michael's engineering services. He got them all the time, so she wasn't sure why he was showing her this one until she read the name of the bidder. It was the DOC, but more specifically, Ohio State Penitentiary, a super maximum security facility in Youngstown. She scanned the rest of the bid, and exhaled in surprise.

"That's a lot of zeros after that dollar sign," she said carefully. Was he showing her this because he wanted to take the work? The idea was unappealing, even for the price offered. "But if you're asking my opinion," she continued slowly, "they could add half a dozen more and I'd still want you to turn it down."

She glanced up at him, and he smiled tightly. "I already did."

Oh. "Were you angry because it's from a prison?"

"I get bids from prisons all the time, even though I state very clearly that I won't work with them. I don't get mad. I just toss them."

"But this one's different?" She felt like she was feeling her way along a dark corridor, unable to tell when and where she'd bump into obstacles.

"Does Ohio State Pen mean anything to you?" he asked her softly.

"Should it?" He looked at her almost vigilantly now, as though ready to spring at something should it cross her path. "Michael?"

He exhaled. "It's where Jacob is. Where he was transferred, after Fox River," he told her. "I know you said you didn't want to know where he was, but of course you could have changed your mind, found out for yourself, should you have wanted to. I just didn't know."

She suddenly felt like sitting down. Michael guided her into his office chair, a hand cradling the swell of her stomach as she eased into the plush leather. "But it must be a coincidence," she ventured.

He showed her a second email, this one still on his phone. It was from the warden of the prison to Michael, cc'ing a few names with DOC and Ohio state government email addresses. _I'm aware that you don't customarily take prison contracts,_ it read, _but heard you might have a vested personal interest in keeping ours secure._

Something about the words sent a shiver down Sara's spine. "Is this a threat?" she breathed.

Michael's expression darkened, but he said, "Then I'm not crazy." He began pacing the small room, while she watched him, not quite knowing what to say. The baby blithely kicked at her ribs, and in a reflex reaction, she placed a hand there. Michael caught the movement: at this maternal gesture, the live wire of his anxiety snapped.

"It's him," he hissed, his voice breathy and angry and impatient. "He's got someone in the governor's office on a puppet string or maybe the warden in his pocket, or more likely he just ran a game on him, I don't know yet, but he's giving me a message. He wanted to make sure this email came right here, right to me, into this office, _in this house._ " He slammed a fist on the desk.

"Michael…" She'd seen him angry before. She'd ridden out plenty a storm. But never like this.

"He's supposed to have zero contact! _Zero!_ Well, this is contact. He knows it. I know it. And I've made sure the warden knows it now, too."

She caught his wrist on his next march across the office floor. Tugged him toward her. "Michael, look at me. We still don't know anything for sure…"

"I do. I know. And I've got to go shut it down." He turned from her, gently releasing himself from her grip.

"What, go to Ohio? Michael!"

He turned back to her at the door, nearly bumping into her. She'd gotten up faster than she had in weeks. He reached for her to steady her, then seemed to truly see her through the haze of his anger for the first time. He curved a hand over her jaw to kiss her, hard. "He will not threaten my family, Sara. Not once. Not ambiguously or outright or any other clever, backhanded way, ever." He looked her as if he could will her to agree with him by force of his fury alone, then repeated, _"I'm shutting. It. Down."_

* * *

It was a six hour drive from Ithaca to Youngstown, but with light traffic and a speedometer edging 90 MPH, Michael made it in four and a half. The warden was not overly glad to see him, but easily intimidated. Michael could have effortlessly shaken him down for information about how, exactly, Jacob Ness had managed to obtain his work email address and then managed to convince the state of Ohio of a need to hire him, but decided that he hadn't come here to prune back an errant hedge. He'd come to pull a weed out by its roots. "I want to see him," he told the warden simply. "Now."

They made a big production out of it, shackling Ness at both the ankles and wrists and locking him behind a mesh box for their visit…all unnecessary, but Michael didn't much care. If they wanted to make him feel like an animal in a cage, so be it.

It interested him how Ness still tried to act like he held the upper hand when he greeted him. "Thought I might get a visitor this week. Kind of wish it would have been a different Scofield, but hey. Beggars can't be choosers."

Indeed. "You and I both know I can make your life a hell of a lot worse than it already is, Jacob."

He smiled, like enjoying an inside joke with himself, just like Michael remembered from countless briefings and meetings in which Ness believed himself to be the smartest man in the room. "Then why don't you?" he said. "Why'd you spring me from T-Bag's cell to set me up in these cushy digs?" He leaned forward as close as he could through his wire box. "Because we both know you're on a leash, and we both know who's holding it."

Michael refused to let him rile him. This pissing match? It wasn't why he was here. "I have no problem admitting my wife is a far better person than me."

" _Better_ person, or conflicted person?"

Michael forced himself to shrug. "Maybe she'll tell you herself sometime. If she ever cares enough to come by. I wouldn't hold your breath, though."

"You sure?"

"You threatened her child. Our. Child. You're done, far as she's concerned."

"And as far as you're concerned?"

"Got an interesting email from the DOC and your warden this week, as you know."

"And?" The smile was back, making Michael's hand itch to slap it off his face. He would, he promised himself. Just not with his hands.

"You know what I told him?"

Jacob continued to smirk.

Michael leaned in close, lowering his voice as though sharing a confession. "I told him to save his money." A muscle in Jacob's jaw twitched, and Michael seized upon this like a carotid artery, exposed. "That's right. You think I'm going to jump to work at your bidding, ever again? You think you're worth that kind of cash? Ha! I said to him, I pass, because you know what, Warden? You don't need me. That notorious inmate of yours? He's not smart enough or talented enough to break out of your super max. I don't worry one damn day about such a laughable possibility and you shouldn't either."

He pushed his chair back, relishing the screeching sound it made scraping across the concrete floor.

"Michael," Jacob taunted, and Michael hated how effectively this simple recall halted him. "You willing to gamble your family's safety like that? _Sara's? Mike's?_ Because no offense, but you don't seem the type."

He spun back to face him. "The way I play your game, _Jacob?_ " He twirled one finger in the air. "Around you in circles? It isn't gambling."

Jacob finally sat back, and shut up. Michael went once more on the offensive. It felt great.

"So here's what you need to know concerning _me_ , Ness. As far as I'm concerned, you get _one_ of these. One. Which you've used. You threaten me again, you threaten anyone I love, and I promise you this: you'll be dead within the day." The smirk tried to return, but not even Ness could quite call it up. "Trust me, I know a guy. I know a lot of guys, all of whom would be happy to do me a favor. So if you put one toe out of line, if you reach out in any way whatsoever to anyone in my family, if someone follows my car just a little too closely, if my kid so much as says someone looked at him funny, _you. Are. Dead._ And your fancy contacts won't be able to save you, and your second-place brain won't be able to save you, and _my wife_ sure as hell won't save you. So I'm going to assume we understand each other. Unless you need me to repeat myself more slowly, for you to catch on."

This time when he pushed his chair back, the screech was followed by a resounding silence.

* * *

Michael made good use of his long commute home, placing several calls in rapid order. He was in possession of a diverse and powerful contact list, and it didn't take long to request several transfers of unsavory yet surprisingly professional hit men to Ohio State Pen, just to keep Ness, as he liked to put it, on a leash. He followed this up with additional calls to replace the warden and a large handful of the prison guards of the max unit. They'd be transferred to other facilities, their incompetence someone else's problem. Lastly, he effectively had every person cc'ed on his email fired from their positions in the Ohio state government or department of corrections. By the time he turned off I-86 in Ithaca, he figured a pretty powerful message had been sent, and decided he didn't hate being in possession of the personal number for the director of the CIA.

When he walked in the front door as causally as if he'd simply been out buying a carton of milk, Sara wrapped her whole body around him, pregnant stomach be damned. "Don't ever do that to me again," she said.

"I won't have to," he answered with certainty. He told her everything, leaving nothing out, from Jacob in the cage right down to their last words, and when he got to the part about firing everyone in contact with him, Sara sat down hard on the couch.

You did what? she asked, sounding slightly faint.

"I said I wasn't going to tolerate it, and I meant it, Sara. No threats. No risks. Never."

"But _assassins,_ Michael?" He studied her face, but there was no hint of sympathy or concern for Jacob there. Only, he realized with a pang, for him. "Bagwell was right, you know. You can't kill. It's a good thing," she added.

"In revenge, maybe not." He hadn't been able to pull the trigger in Gretchen's face, after all, much as he'd wanted to. "But in protection of you?" He placed a hand on her stomach. "Of our children?" He had no doubt. "Absolutely. In cold blood. With my bare hands."

She swallowed hard, and he attempted to lighten the mood. "No hit man necessary, actually, but it just seemed more…convenient." He quirked her a smile.

"The things we actually discuss in this house," she told him, offering him a shaky laugh.

* * *

Sara did not remember being this big last time. She felt like a school bus. And had Ithaca ever been so hot? This summer seemed sweltering, like she was stuck in an oven that was somehow also functioning as a steam room. By August, she'd had it.

"I think you look amazing," Michael told her, hands on the curve of her stomach to try to feel the baby kick, which it did, all the freaking time.

"You have to say that," she grumbled.

"You look like you're going to have a basketball, not a baby," Mike observed, "or maybe a whole team of basketballs."

"Basketballs don't have teams," she informed him. "Teams play basketball." Sheesh, maybe they needed to familiarize the kid with a sport other than soccer.

"You're grumpy," he told her.

She sighed. "I know."

She passed a lot of time watching Netflix. Possibly too much, she noted, as she blew through three seasons of her latest guilty pleasure in as many weeks, but Mike was in soccer camp most of the day, and Michael had convinced her to start her maternity leave several weeks before her due date. They were completely prepared for the baby — as if Michael would leave anything to the last minute — so what else was she supposed to do, except catch up on _Orange is the New Black_? Still, she had the grace to feel embarrassed when Michael caught her watching one afternoon, a huge bowl of popcorn nestled in what remained of her lap.

He grabbed the remote before she could shut off the screen. "Seriously?" he asked her, a smile already twitching on his face. "Women's prison smut?"

"It's not _smut,_ Michael," she defended. "It's gritty realism."

"Yeah? Alright." He sat down with her, grabbing the popcorn bowl. "Let's see how realistic."

She sighed. "If you're trying to ruin this for me, you're forgetting I have more inside knowledge of the women's prison system than you do."

This gave him pause, she could tell. But he just said softly. "I didn't forget."

He watched with her for a while, mildly pointing out all the things portrayed incorrectly. As a consolation prize, he at least rubbed her feet while he was at it. "They're not doing that right," he noted, during a pat down scene at visitation, "nor that," as they watched the line of cooks in the kitchen. But in the very next scene, his eyes went a little wide and his hands stilled on her foot. He had to concede, "Looks likes she's doing that right, though," as they watched a prisoner perform a particularly ahem…smutty…act for a fellow inmate in the showers.

Sara just slid him a look that she hoped conveyed both her irritation and blatant appreciation. "Well, you would know, given you happen to share that particular talent." She bent her leg to tickle his inner thigh with her foot that rested on his knee. He grinned at her wickedly, finally clicking off the TV, but when he pulled her closer to him on the couch, it didn't take long to realize there was absolutely no way to recreate the scene they'd watched around Sara's stubbornly invasive belly.

"Ugh. Be born already," she grumbled at her stomach, as she pulled away from Michael. It was way too hot to even touch another human being, let alone attempt such acrobatics.

"They say sex can initiate labor," Michael observed, apparently not as ready to give up. He rubbed her lower back in long, sweeping arcs. She didn't think it wise to tell him that this massage felt much better than sex right now.

"But it's so much work," she sighed.

"What every husband longs to hear," he chuckled.

"There is one thing you can do," she said, and his hands stilled momentarily.

"Whatever you want," he said roughly, into her ear.

Mmm. This almost persuaded her, but then she thought about how sweaty she did not want to be right now, and shut him down. "Get the baby name book?"

"Oh."

"I would do it, but I don't think I can even move right now."

He gave her a wry smile as he lifted himself off the couch with a kiss to her hot forehead. "Yeah, I got that message loud and clear."

They passed the time until Mike returned from camp debating baby names. They had arrived at a girl name option months ago, but for some reason, a boy name eluded them. The only thing they could agree upon was that nothing sounded exactly right. "It needs to mean something," Sara insisted. "Like Mike's name does."

Michael rolled his eyes. "Well, we can't have a Michael Jr, _Jr._ It's time to expand our horizons a bit."

A half hour later, she tossed the baby name book aside in frustration. "None of these work."

He read the title where it rested face up on the floor. "But there are 10,000 options in there."

She simply shook her head. Maybe it would be a girl, and they would be saved from this predicament.

The day the name came to her, she'd been mindlessly watching a world news report that flashed a stock image of the Taj Mahal. It reminded her of her time in India, but something else too…something she thought Michael would like. She repeated the name in her head, feeling it out, and then she was certain. It almost scared her, how much she liked this name, because what if Michael didn't feel the same way? She told him her idea that night, whispering it in his ear as they lay together in bed, Michael's hand massaging what they'd decided was the baby's heel through her skin. He slid her a slow smile that warmed her in the first pleasant way in weeks. And then he added a middle name, an equally perfect middle name, and they were decided.

"We're not telling," they both insisted, when anyone asked, which Sara could see was super annoying. She didn't care. They loved this name, and they weren't going to utter this name until the baby was here, and they were all together.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note: This is a MONSTER of an installment, almost 10,000 words. I couldn't break it up…I think you'll see why. I do suggest reading it in one sitting, so maybe wait for a moment you can grab a glass of your favorite beverage and sit for a while. My disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, and while I researched extensively for this chapter, I intentionally twisted a few medical facts to suit the story I wanted to tell. If you're in the medical field, it may drive you a little crazy. This installment takes us to the end of this WIP, but I may have a few one-shots to add to it in the future, plus maybe an epilogue. Thank you, all, for reading.**

Sunset

Sara went into labor at 5:42 pm on a Tuesday in late August. Michael knew the exact time for certain, because he set his watch to measure the minutes between contractions from the very first one.

Pretty early on, even while they were still all at the house, Sara started saying, "This isn't like with Mike. Something is different."

"Maybe you just don't remember all of it," Lincoln suggested several hours later, after he'd arrived on the 8 pm flight to babysit.

"I do," Sara insisted. "I remember."

"What's different?" Michael asked her, after she'd bent inward over another contraction. The pain had started benignly enough, but right away, it seemed to Michael, it had intensified. This contraction seemed particularly serious, and he thought they should already be at the hospital by now. He didn't like that they were still at home.

"Just, sharper," she managed, when she'd straightened again. "I can't describe it."

He remembered something he'd read. "The second time can be faster," he reminded her. "That would be good, right?"

She nodded, seeming to take comfort in this idea, but before she'd really had a chance to recover from the last contraction, the next was already upon her. She dug her fingers into Michael's bicep as she tried to bite down on a cry. "Maybe much faster," she gasped. She glanced up the stairs to where Mike had gone to bed. He knew what she was thinking: she wouldn't be able to stay quiet enough for him to sleep for long. Finally, she said the words Michael longed to hear. "We should go."

At the hospital, the attending physician shook his head when she insisted she had to be at least 6-7 centimeters dilated. "No more than one or two," he informed them after a cursory exam, to which Sara just kept saying, no.

"Yes," Michael told her softly, but she continued to shake her head.

"It's not right," she kept repeating, until Michael got her OB, Dr. Coleson, on the line, even though it was after hours and his on-call doc was already on his way.

"Your pain level is here," the attending ER physician told Sara, raising his hand to the level of his head. "But you've been laboring for several hours already, and you still have a long way to go. I think it would be a good idea to consider —"

"No," Sara shot back.

The attending turned to Michael. "She's going to need to reserve some energy," he tried, and Michael cut him off right there.

"Her answer won't change. No pain meds." He couldn't believe he was saying this, but he was unimpressed by the doctor's patronizing tone. Sara's hand squeezed his in thanks, and he knew he'd go on saying it all night if he had to.

"Well, if you're refusing pain management, you could go back home, I suppose." The attending dismissed them, clearly annoyed at having his advice thrown back in his face. "Come back at four centimeters."

Sara shook her head. "Something's not right," she said again, pretty much just to Michael, since no one else was listening to her. The contractions came like sets of waves now, one rolling nearly into the next. Before the attending could turn away, Michael caught him by the arm.

"If she says it's not right, it's not _right!_ " he heard himself yell. Sara touched his shoulder, and he knew he was supposed to stay calm, but if she was worried, Michael felt ready to panic. "Admit her. Now."

She got a room, and the on-call doc from their OB practice arrived, observed Sara for a while, then asked for a specialist to be called back in, who'd apparently just gone home. He returned just as Dr. Coleson arrived, still in his slippers. In the back of his mind, it occurred to Michael that this might be a bad sign, that everyone was getting out of bed for this. But by now, the doctors were finally agreeing with Sara and taking her seriously, and his misgivings were chased away by gratitude. The two doctors from their practice, joined by the specialist and support staff from Labor and Delivery came and went from the room, ordering tests, taking vitals, and strapping on monitors, as Sara labored and labored hour after hour with no progress. By the time dawn cast a weak light across the floor of their room in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Michael felt absolutely wrung out, spent of all ability to think rationally as Sara curled into the tremors that ripped through her but seemed to do nothing. She was so exhausted, she actually fell asleep between contractions, yanked back into consciousness every few minutes by the invisible pain that wrapped itself around her. It was worse than watching the frequent torture sessions on display at Ogygia. Much worse.

"Please," Michael begged her, when her eyes focused on his briefly. She braced against the bed rail, refusing to lie down. "Anything to stop this."

She continued to resist a spinal block, an epidural, a drip, anything. "They're all laced with narcotics, Michael. I can't have it."

"Please," he begged again, as they strapped more monitors on and off of her. "Talk to me. Tell me what you need." He had to work to keep her attention. Sara was no longer second-guessing physicians or offering opinions. Sometime in the last few hours, she had turned inward, as though all that existed for her was her body and the baby and the pain.

"Water," she managed to gasp at one point, her hand tangling in Michael's sleeve as a contraction loosened its hold on her. But the medical staff refused her.

"Why not?" Michael asked angrily. He'd get her a glass of water himself if was so much trouble.

Sara looked ready to pass out. "I know why," she said bleakly, energy for only a few cursory words at a time. "Surgery."

Now that Michael listened to the doctors around him, he realized she was right: they were starting to murmur about fetal distress and a cesarean section. This last development actually gave Michael hope: if she went into surgery, this torture would end. And she could no longer refuse drugs. A sickening thought gripped him. _Right?_

But then, before he had a chance to convince her of the C-Section, before he could ask their OB about the risks of taking any extreme measures, before Michael could settle on how much worse this could get, he got his answer. Everything suddenly went terribly, horribly sideways, like some giant hand had picked up their hospital room and tipped it over. Sara released a gut-wrenching scream mid-contraction, and then, strangely, Michael felt like he'd fallen underwater. Like he'd been caught in the surf at Baja, rocked about by a wave until up was no longer up and down was no longer down. He tumbled there, unsure which way to move, while the room filled with people: more RNs and PAs in scrubs, the floor's rapid response team, then more doctors. Something beeped incessantly, an alarm code buzzed, and then finally he felt hands pushing him backward and the wave spit him out on the other side of the door. He gulped a breath in the stark, artificially lit hallway, then refocused on the door and barreled back through it.

"Sara!" he screamed.

He found her again on the bed that was for some reason now a gurney but she was being wheeled out and didn't answer him. His brain told him three things at once: Sara was no longer screaming and she wasn't conscious and there was blood everywhere: on the gurney, the sheet, Sara, the floor. Too much blood. "There shouldn't even be blood yet!" Michael heard himself yell, because there was no baby yet, but the doctors didn't pay him any attention. Someone thrust something into his hands: a clipboard with papers on it, and he stared at the print, his vision swimming. Someone pushed him back into the hall again.

"Here, and here," the same someone shouted at him, jabbing a pen at the paper. "You need to sign."

"What?" he said numbly. "What is it?" He read the heading Emergency Medical Release followed by many medical terms Sara would know but he didn't. Down near the bottom, he recognized some words, words Sara wouldn't want. Stadol. Fentanyl. He should say no to this, right? He couldn't think straight.

The hands that had thrust the papers at him shook his shoulders. "Sign this, Mr. Scofield, so we can get her into surgery."

He tried to breathe, to see the words more clearly, but his brain was rapidly becoming consumed with a roar that was building, building, building…"She doesn't want this," he said, trying to point to the word Fentanyl. "Or this — "

 _"Does she want you to raise your child by yourself?_ " the person shouted. _"Sign it."_

Michael signed.

* * *

It was very, very quiet wherever Michael waited. He was alone, and the room had concrete walls painted mint green, and he stared at these walls for a long time, until he began to think they were Fox River walls, in Ag Seg, and then he shook his head viciously to clear it. Because he couldn't do that…couldn't sink down, down, down, where he wanted to go, where his mind could do other things…like make pathways and see solutions. He had to be here, because this was a hospital not a prison and he was waiting… And then he remembered the blood and the gurney and the forms and why he was waiting and the roar in his head returned with a vengeance and he barely made it across the room to the waste basket before retching into it.

After that, he paced the room, back and forth, fourteen steps forward, turn, fourteen steps back, his brain on a loop of _what's happening, what's happening, what's happening,_ until finally, Dr. Coleson stepped through the door. His scrubs made him look like an extra in a horror film and Michael felt himself sitting back down on a plastic chair, hard. The doctor crossed the room and sat next to him. "Michael? You have a son," he said softly. "He's healthy and doing very well."

Michael exhaled. _A son. A second beautiful boy._ He thought of himself and Linc, and then of Mike and this new baby, and it seemed so fitting, somehow. So obvious, that Mike would get a brother. A tiny sliver of joy, like a slant of sunlight, cut across the dark roar in his head. Then it was gone. "My wife?"

The doctor placed his hand over Michael's. "We were able to stop the hemorrhaging, and she's stable right now. Why don't I get cleaned up, and you go see your child, and then we'll talk more."

"No." He slid his hand out from under the OB's. Had they already told him she'd hemorrhaged? Had he completely blocked that out? "You tell me everything, right now."

Coleson looked like he might have expected this. "Sara was already very weak going into surgery, which is probably why she didn't do as well as we'd hoped. To help her chances at recovery, I've placed her in what we call a barbiturate-induced, or medically induced, coma." A what?! The roar swelled to an ear-splitting decibel. Michael crushed his hands to his head, squeezing it like a vice. The doctor said, "Medically induced means we can pull her out of it any time, Michael. It gives her the chance to rest, and for her body to remain stable while we give her a transfusion and work on clotting her blood."

He lifted his head. He'd been right, then: there'd been too much blood. "And if you bring her out of the coma right now?"

Coleson spoke calmly but firmly. "We should not do that. It would be too soon. Do you understand?"

* * *

He was allowed to sit by her bed, in her new room, this one in the surgical recovery unit of the ICU. If he just looked at her face, she seemed okay. She just slept, her expression finally smooth, free from the awful pain that Michael had so badly wanted to save her from. But if he looked at her hands, he had to see the needles secured under her skin with medical tape, and the clear plastic tubing that snaked upward to the big plastic bags that dispensed clear fluid into her veins. He'd asked the duty nurse what they were, then had read the labels on the bags himself. Some sort of blood thickener, antibiotics, pentobarbital to keep her comatose, and…morphine. Of course, morphine. He'd asked why it couldn't be anything else, any other type of pain killer at all, but he knew it didn't really matter. She would weep when she woke, he thought on a soft sob, no matter what type of narcotic they pumped into her.

The next time he looked anywhere but at Sara's face, Lincoln was there, sitting next to him, his hand resting on Michael's knee. He blinked. How had he gotten here? With a start, Michael realized he'd never even called him. How many hours had he sat here? "Mikey's at Heather's," Linc told him quietly. "He's fine."

Michael couldn't acknowledge this. He just stared back at Sara again. "Morphine, Linc," he said flatly. "I signed off on that." He lay his face into his hands.

"What?" Lincoln said, then: "Fuck that, Michael. It doesn't matter right now." Michael had nothing to say to this, either, and he felt Lincoln look at him strangely. "Don't give that another thought, alright?" He nodded, but he wasn't really listening. "If she walks away from this and has anything to say to you about that, she can go through me," Lincoln added.

Something Lincoln said sounded wrong, and it took Michael a moment to place it through the awful roar in his ears. "What do you mean, _if?_ "

Lincoln looked hard at him again, then released a long, deep breath. "Nothing. I'm sorry." He stood up. "Where's the baby, Mike? How is he?"

The baby. He had no idea where he was. Even as this skull-pounding nightmare gripped his brain, he knew this was not a good thing. "I don't know, Linc."

"What do you mean, you don't know? Haven't you see him? What the _fuck,_ Michael?!" The duty nurse poked her head into the room with a frown, and Michael watched Lincoln try to rein himself in. From what? Michael couldn't think, with this roar. Lincoln placed his hands on Michael's shoulders, and the touch reminded him of signing those papers all over again. He tried to shake him off, but Linc wasn't having it. "Do you think Sara wants you ignoring the baby, Michael? You think that would be a-ok by her?"

The roar _ROARED_ now, there was no other way to describe it, and Michael pushed Lincoln away from him with a look of angry, defeated, hopeless hatred.

Lincoln just laughed in a hard, hollow way. "Yeah, I've seen that look before. Didn't work on me when she gave it to me, either." Somewhere under the roar, a thin layer of perspective rose to the surface of Michael's consciousness, and he snagged it briefly. Lincoln had been here before, picking up the pieces, placing babies in arms, telling Sara, and now Michael, to get on with it, to get up, to get shit together. But Lincoln was forgetting one important truth: Michael was certain Sara had always been stronger than him.

Lincoln eventually forced Michael out of the room and down the elevator to the maternity ward, where his son was finally placed into his hands. He felt heavier than he'd expected: 7 pounds, 12 ounces, the nurse informed him, but it was like she'd overlooked some additional unit of measurement…the heft of sorrow, maybe. Michael feared he might drop him, in that first second. And then he looked down at him, and the roar quieted for a moment, and the bands around his chest that had roped off his heart since seeing Sara in all that blood loosened, just a little _. "Hi,"_ he breathed.

Lincoln peered at him around Michael's shoulder. "He looks like you," he said, "but with Mike's cheekbones, I think. Your eyes, though." They were a deep blue-green, the color of a calm sea.

"Eye color can change," Michael recalled from the books he'd read. His head felt mercifully clearer, holding this little person. The baby scrunched up his face, little mouth opening, his tiny arms rising from the folds of his blanket as his entire body seemed to participate in a yawn. "Oh!" Michael exclaimed. He smiled. It felt foreign and wrong on his face, but he couldn't stop it, watching his son.

Lincoln chuckled. "What's his name, Mike? They were asking." He tipped his head in the direction of the maternity ward nurse station.

Just like that, the roar was back. "I want to wait for Sara," he said. That had been the plan, all along. They'd tell everyone the name together.

Lincoln looked weary again, but he just nodded. One of the nurses approached with a bottle. "We're doing 2-4 ounces every four hours," she explained. "Do you want to take over this feeding?" Lincoln started to say that this might be too much for Michael right now, but he interrupted him.

"Yes," he said, "but it should say on his chart…we're going to breastfeed." Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he'd done it again…mixed up something due to the incessant roar. It reminded him of when he'd suffered from his tumor…things got jumbled. Words, but also memories, entire concepts.

The nurse hesitated for an instant. "Yes, but…not just yet." Another nurse added gently, "Our thoughts and prayers are with your wife, Mr. Scofield."

Oh yeah. That was it. "She's going to be fine," Michael told them. He saw Lincoln exchange a glance with the head nurse, and he looked determinedly back down at the baby. "But for now, I'll try a bottle, if it's time?" _That was normal, right?_ he wanted to shout. _That made sense to everyone?_

Sometime around 8 pm, after Michael had stationed himself back in Sara's room, Lincoln reminded him gently that it had been over 24 hours since he left the house, and Mike was asking for him. "You need to tell him something," Lincoln said, "even if you just want to tell him everything's fine." He said this last part through gritted teeth. "And you can take a shower, and maybe sleep?" This part was said more hopefully. Before Michael could protest, he added, "Remember, the doctor said he wouldn't have an update for you here until early morning."

Michael wanted to stay right here, but the thought of Mike at home, up after bedtime, alone with just Heather, loosened those ropes around his heart again and he stood. "Of course I'll go see Mike," he told Linc. "But if you can stay the night there, I'll come back after he falls asleep."

When they got home, Michael hugged his son for a long time, then thanked Heather, who in turn hugged him for a long time. "Lincoln will fill you in," he told her, when she asked about Sara and the baby. He just couldn't. He went upstairs with Mike. Trying not to look like he'd recently been torn in two, he said with his greatest attempt at cheeriness, "Have you heard, Mike? You have a new baby brother." He opened his phone and showed him a photo Lincoln had reminded him to take.

Mike's enthusiasm was as heartfelt as Michael's was presently forced. "Yes! A _boy!_ " he shouted loud enough to send Lincoln's bass chuckle up the stairs after them.

Michael sat heavily on Mike's bed. "I'm sorry it took me so long to get back home," he said slowly, "but here's the thing. Your mom is still in the hospital and she's going to be there for a little while longer."

Mike looked concerned for the first time. Michael would have to thank Heather again later; she'd obviously given Mike no cause for alarm. "Is Mom alright?"

The roar had quieted to a muffled murmur, like the cacophony of voices in a crowded coffee shop, but it was still present, confusing him sometimes. "She will be." That was true, wasn't it? It had to be, because he didn't lie to his son. Mike looked at him then the way everyone else had been looking at him, like he couldn't decide if Michael was alright. It made him want to lay his head down on Mike's pillow and shut out the world. Maybe he'd just rest for a minute, read his kid a book.

"Are you tired, Dad?" Mike asked a few minutes later.

He thought he'd been reading, but the book was on his chest. He would need to open his eyes back up to read. "I guess I am. It's just that it took a long time to get your brother here," he murmured.

"When is he going to be home with us?" Mike snuggled down next to Michael, and that was nice…he felt a little less like weeping with Mike against him like that, warm and whole.

"Soon. He'll come home with Mom, I think." But now that he said the words aloud, he wasn't sure about that…they didn't like to keep healthy babies in the ward too long, and maybe Sara wouldn't be quite ready to come home as soon? He should find that out, he thought hazily. He should figure out how he could take care of Mike and the baby and Sara, in different places all at once….

The next thing he knew, he woke with a start, frantically scanning the room until his eye snagged on Mike's Avengers alarm clock. 3:40 am. Shit. He untangled himself from a peacefully sleeping Mike, and stumbled downstairs. Linc slept on the couch, and he shook his shoulder roughly. "Why did you let me fall asleep?" he accused.

Lincoln looked at him groggily. "There's no news," he assured him. "You needed the rest." He closed his eyes again. "Take a shower, Michael. Go back in a bit."

He called the hospital to make sure Lincoln hadn't been bullshitting him, then stepped under the hot shower spray, letting it wash away at least the top layer of the fear and worry clinging to his skin. He'd smelled it on himself all day. Or all yesterday, rather, he corrected himself. He did feel a little more human when he stepped out of the steam and put on clean clothes, and by the time he'd found the car keys by the front door, he felt sure he could drive himself back to the hospital without ending up in a ditch somewhere.

"I'll be right here, man," Lincoln mumbled from the couch. "Call me, if…if you need me."

He shut the door behind him with a soft click.

* * *

In Sara's room, it was quiet save for the steady whoosh of some contraption hooked to her, and the calm beep-beep-beep of her heart rate monitor. The clock read 4:55 am. At 6 am, the duty nurse came in and adjusted all the drip bags of the hated narcotics and medications, then patted him gently on the shoulder on her way out. At 8 am, Dr. Coleson came in, read through Sara's chart on the wall, then sat beside him.

"You look better today," he told Michael quietly. "Are you feeling up to talking?"

God, he really must have been a wretched mess yesterday. He nodded. "Can we get her off this stuff?" he asked. He didn't only mean the narcotics. "All this stuff keeping her unconscious?"

Surprisingly, the OB agreed. "That's my goal, too, Michael. But I'm going to explain the risks, alright?" He waited for Michael's nod again. "She's recouped the blood she lost, I'm not worried about that," he said. "And she's young, and healthy, and has a lot to live for." Michael swallowed. "But when we wake her, that's when we learn whether her blood is going to successfully clot on its own. And if it doesn't…" He waited for Michael to look at him. "Her blood pressure plummets, and things get real, real fast."

Michael's throat felt like sand paper. "Do you think it will clot?"

"I do, or I wouldn't be sitting here discussing it with you. But I don't _know_ it will."

"What's the alternative?"

Coleson nodded again, like Michael had passed some test, asking the right questions. "Endless night, on the morphine drip," he said bluntly. "But she can't stay in that limbo too long. Induced comas come with complications that multiply the longer the patient is under."

Michael looked at Sara's peaceful face. If he did this, if he forced her back to them now, she'd be in pain again. She'd be fighting again. But she'd be back with them. And she'd hate the idea of the endless morphine night. Or like it too much. Either way: "We need to do it."

Coleson said, "Early this afternoon, then."

Michael disliked the idea of waiting. "Why not now?"

He studied Michael like he was still trying to decide how much he could handle. "I want to give you some time with her," he said slowly. "You have another son, a six-year-old, right?" At Michael's nod, he explained, "It's my opinion, my…recommendation…that you have him come by this morning. Visit with his mother."

"Now? While she's like this? No." Why would he do that to their boy?

"Just in case." He placed a hand on Michael's knee, which Michael angrily shook off.

"He'll see her when she's awake," he bit out. "He doesn't need to see her before, not if you do your job."

"Michael. I told you I can't guarantee…any doctor would tell you the same. _Sara_ would tell you the same."

"Well I'll ask her in a few hours," Michael growled. "And you'd better be right."

* * *

He called Lincoln with the update, unable to curb another angry outburst as he described the doctor's recommendation. "What kind of twisted thinking is that?" Lincoln agreed. "Mike will see her soon. Probably tonight. In the meantime, we'll be playing Madden. You can tell that Coleson quack what I think of his suggestion."

Michael felt a smile lift his face for the second time in two days. "Thank you, Linc."

In the maternity ward, he held the baby for the rest of the morning, marveling at his tiny feet, his skin that somehow smelled divine, his eyes that remained the rich color of a tranquil sea. In his head, he was already addressing him by his name, but he stubbornly refused to amend the placard on his clear plastic bassinet. It would read Baby Boy Scofield, much to the nursing staff's disappointment, until Sara woke up.

At 2 pm on Thursday, he returned to Sara's room, where Coleson walked him through the process of freeing Sara from her many machines. "It's all going to go?" he asked. Neither of them mentioned Michael's outburst that morning, for which he was grateful. Just do your job, he thought again darkly, and we'll be fine.

"All but the monitor, blood pressure machine…and the pain relief," the doctor told him firmly. "She had major surgery just yesterday, in conjunction with heavy blood loss. The last thing we want to do is shock her body with severe pain the second she regains consciousness."

"Surely there's something else you can give her," he tried. "If she wakes up with that in her arm…" He couldn't bear it.

"She can't take a couple Tylenol for this," he said sadly. "You'll just have to help her through it."

Michael closed his eyes. "Okay. And how long until we know about the clotting?"

"Probably before she's even completely conscious. We'll bring her up slowly, from the coma to what is, for all intents and purposes, regular sleep. We'll be able to read her blood pressure several times in that period, and if all looks good, we'll let her wake on her own."

"And if it doesn't?"

"We'll put her back under, if we can stabilize her." That 'if' word was back. Michael thought it should be banished from the English language.

He sat at Sara's head and picked up her hand, careful to avoid jarring the damned needles under her skin. He watched as the various bags and tubes were removed one by one, then stared at the monitor, willing it to continue its steady cadence of beep-beep-beep.

Right away, there was a problem. The blood pressure gauge went off with a flashing red alarm, then her heart rate monitor joined the party, faltering in its rhythm from beep-beep-beep to a jarring, definitive _beeeeeeeeeeep,_ like Sara had just decided, Nope. Not today. Just like that. Coleson shouted something to the nurse, and suddenly there were more people in the room, just like yesterday, but this time, Michael remained rooted in place, a rock stuck in an impossibly swift current, pinned by a fright so tangible, he thought he might drown in it. He held Sara's hand tightly as the blood pressure machine screamed, and people jostled for position all around him, clamoring for space. The roar escalated until all he heard over it was the _beeeeeeeep_.

"Sara!" he yelled, over the roar, because she'd moved, she'd blinked with an awful jolt, but then someone stuck her with something, and he could see she wouldn't hear him. She was already under again, floating somewhere far away from him. The _beeeeeeeeep_ returned to a beep-beep-beep, but instead of giving him comfort, the sound suddenly enraged him.

"No!" he told her harshly, the crushing disappointment at this outcome turning his body even more completely to lead. "This is _not_ the plan, Sara," he hissed. He could just…hit her, he was so mad at her for this. Because what was she _doing?_ She was supposed to be waking up, not refusing them like this. All the stuff they'd unplugged got plugged back in, plus more drip bags and IVs, all added while Michael just sat there, seething.

Coleson turned to him, looking shaken, but he didn't need to explain. Michael knew: it hadn't worked. "We'll give her another 12 hours," the doctor said. "Try again then."

He continued to sit, Sara's hand limp in his, feeling her silence and stillness like a slap. She'd never denied him like this, when he'd needed her. Not ever. The roar rumbled through his head like thunder now, its volume scaring him. When he finally remembered to pick up his phone and step out into the hall to call Lincoln, he had to concentrate very hard to hear him. His brother said lots of words, but all Michael grasped around the roar were 'second opinion' and "Mikey', and 'what to do'.

"I don't know," Michael shouted into his phone. "I don't know, I don't know, I _don't. Know!_ "

"I'm coming right now," Lincoln said.

* * *

Twelve hours. Another night. Another two, three meals skipped. Another visit home, to look into Mike's eyes and tell him everything would be alright. Heather mostly cried now, hiding in the bathroom so as not to alarm Mike, a fact she acknowledged was unhelpful. She called another friend of Sara's — she actually had so many, Michael realized with a pang — who came to get Mike right away. Back at the hospital, the maternity staff wanted to see him. When he and Linc arrived, Michael held the baby while his brother talked to them. He heard someone ask about arrangements at home, and Lincoln asked about keeping the baby admitted. "Because it's just me to help, and I have my older nephew to think about, too," Lincoln explained, his voice tight with stress. "Michael and me? It's just the two of us."

This fact sank to land with a fatalistic thunk upon the cold, dark ocean floor of Michael's consciousness. _Was_ it just the two of them? Hadn't it been, all along? Lincoln walked back to him then, smiled sadly down at the baby, and said, "They'll keep him in the ward another day, Mike, but we have to start thinking about bringing him home after that. By Friday…"

"That's fine. Sara will be awake before then." Definitely before Friday. What was today? Oh. Thursday. He turned from the baby to look at Lincoln, who had started to make an odd groaning sound. "What?"

He just shook his head miserably. He stared at his new nephew blankly for a while. "What's his name, Mike? C'mon. Give me something."

"I'm letting Sara say." Somewhere, under the blanket of sleep she'd wrapped herself back in, Michael knew the name was on her lips, and he wanted to let her tell it.

"Michael," Lincoln groaned again. "Please come back to me. It's fucking lonely in reality by myself."

* * *

They sat by Sara for hours at a time. Sometimes just Michael, sometimes just Linc, but usually both of them, side by side. The hospital chaplain visited, offering to pray with them, or to chaperone Michael to the multi-faith chapel just down the hall. But who would he pray to? Whatever god had given him back his brother and Sara and his sons had also put Lincoln in an electric chair. Had tortured and scarred his wife. Had hooked her to these machines. No, best to just sit here in the company of his roar. At least it was as angry as Michael.

Coleson talked more about a visit for Mike. This time, Lincoln didn't seem to think it was such a terrible idea, which made Michael feel betrayed. "You don't want to have denied him, Michael, if…"

'If' again. What was with _if?!_ "The next person to say the word _if_ in this room," Michael bellowed, "will not enter it again. I don't care who you are." He glared at his brother, but gave Coleson and the attending nurse a hard look, too.

A few minutes later, Coleson left of his own volition, ushering Lincoln out of the room with him. Michael blocked out whatever he asked, but Linc's low baritone carried through the doorway in answer. "No. He won't be capable of deciding that."

There was a pause, then they must have moved closer to the door, because Michael heard Coleson ask, "Will you be?"

"If I have to be." Lincoln sounded like he'd swallowed glass.

"I'll have the legal department draw up the papers."

Michael went back to listening to the roar. Sometime in the past day, the steady, angry sound had become his friend.

* * *

Right up until the next 'wake up' time, scheduled for very early Friday morning, Michael sat again with the baby. His son was so alert, his little mouth moving as he experimented with the concept of having lips and gums and a tongue at his disposal. His eyes were still the same sea blue, and tonight, they looked right up at him, so open and bright and clear. Something about their color caused Michael to see something unexpected in his mind's eye, just a glimpse of something, really, on a wisp of wind and sun and salt, but it brought a true smile to Michael's lips. It woke his senses better than a jolt of straight caffeine, and he reverently brushed a kiss to his son's small nose, then his cheeks and forehead. When it was time to return to Sara, he felt calmer than he had since arriving in this hospital on Tuesday, relinquishing the baby to the nurse with a soft squeeze of one tiny hand. Lincoln was back home with Mike, but that was okay, because now, Michael knew that, somehow, he was going to get through this. They all were.

This time, when the bulk of the tubes and contraptions were removed just after 4 am, there was no falter. Sara rose from the medically induced slumber to a lighter sleep with a single, soft exhale, while the monitor recorded an even, strong beat. She slept on, moving occasionally, which gave Michael a quick thrill each time: shifting her head slightly, sliding her legs under the sheet. They took her blood pressure three times, and it was low, lower than they'd like, Michael was told, but at what Coleson decided was still a manageable level.

Finally, Sara's hand shifted a fraction of an inch in Michael's, and he'd like to think that something about the familiar touch of his fingers caused her eyes to blink almost indecipherably. He squeezed her hand gently, trying not to think about the afternoon before. "Sara."

She sighed softly again, and seemed to fall back asleep. Michael waited a few minutes, then his patience ran out and he squeezed her hand again. This time, her fingers flicked a feather light touch against his, and she woke with a gasp.

"Sara. Sweetheart?" She looked at him with clouded, tawny eyes that squinted in confusion. Her lips mouthed his name, but no sound came out. "It's okay," he told her, and he felt her fingers stronger now, in his.

She began to breathe fast, and the monitor beeped a higher pitched trill of alarm, and he said, "Sara?" again, his voice tight, but the nurse next to him just turned down the monitor volume so it wouldn't scream and set a soothing hand on Sara's shoulder.

"Okay," she said softly. "Sara? You're doing fine."

The sight of the nurse seemed to cause something big to click in Sara's head. "My baby?" she asked, each syllable sounding heavy, like they tripped up her tongue. Her eyes searched Michael's, brighter, suddenly, with anxiety. The monitor kept pace with her, humming louder.

He squeezed her hand again, smiling. "He's good. Great. He's perfect and healthy, Sara."

She exhaled. "He?"

Michael nodded, holding his breath. Part of him braced against hearing the scream of the monitors, the roar of his head. She had to stay with him now. She couldn't go back under. Not again. He knew this in his gut. It was like knowing a terrible danger lay just on the other side of a feebly thin door.

"Henry?" She looked again to Michael for confirmation. Every face in the room registered confusion, except his. He beamed at her. Suddenly he could breathe properly again. "He is now." He'd enjoy telling the maternity ward staff to change the placard.

"Where is he?" Sara tried to rise, then sucked in a sharp breath of pain.

The nurse immediately guided her gently back into the pillow. She pressed the button on the blood pressure cuff to initiate a new test while she was at it. "Lie still for a moment, honey," she instructed. "Low breaths."

Sara seemed to use this moment to take stock. "Michael? What happened? Where's Henry?" she asked again.

"Everything is fine," he said, willing her not to discover the morphine drip yet. He still felt acutely aware of the monitors and blood pressure machine, as if he could will them to stay quiet, to behave. "Maybe just close your eyes."

She complied, but a flicker of disoriented sadness registered on her lips. Michael turned to whoever was closest. "Can't she see her son? Can't we get him here?"

"Already on his way," Coleson told him swiftly, and Michael decided he might just forgive him for his share of the 'if's.

The blood pressure cuff beeped, and Sara opened her eyes at the sound. The nurse glanced at the display and frowned. Sara didn't miss this. "What's my BP?"

"It's low, honey. Do you feel lightheaded?" Sara nodded. "You just need to lie back for a while."

Michael leaned toward her. How was she supposed to stay calm while trying to piece everything together? "Henry was born…" God, when? "Early Wednesday morning," he told her softly.

"What time is it now?" she managed. She didn't seem to realize he had measured their son's age in days, not hours.

"Almost 5 am, Friday."

This distressed her. "Michael, I haven't been? I've been?" She didn't seem to know where to start. The damned blood pressure cuff resumed another round of constriction, and the nurse asked her to breathe again.

"It's okay," Michael told her. "You're okay."

She squeezed his hand harder through the test. Michael squeezed back, though he felt pretty sure this wouldn't aid in the results, which Sara again tried to glimpse on the display. Lifting herself from the mattress resulted in another cry of pain. She looked down at herself, as though trying to place the source of the injury. "How low?" she asked the RN.

The nurse still didn't answer directly, which frustrated Michael. "Tell her the number," he told her in a harsh undertone. "She's a physician, she'll understand."

"Then hearing the number will _not_ help calm her," the woman said darkly. Then she looked up and exhaled. "But this will."

A new nurse entered the room with a sleeping Henry. Carefully, at Coleson's nod, she offered him to Sara. _"Ohhhhh,"_ she said at once, seeming to forget instantly about the blood pressure cuff. Everyone in the room sighed along with her, as though the wave of tranquility the baby washed over her was contagious. But as Sara lifted her arms to accept him, she saw the plastic tubing in her hand and the clear liquid flowing through it and suddenly her eyes went wild and the monitor screamed.

"Whoa," the nurse said, reaching back for the baby, but Michael blocked her arm. He kept Henry in Sara's arms, and cupped her face firmly in his hands, blocking her view of the drip. "Look at Henry, Sara," he commanded, turning her head for her. "Look at him. _This_ is what matters."

She took gulps of breath, trying hard to do what he asked, looking down at their son, her face collapsing as she cried at the perfect sight of him, then harder as she noticed her tears wetting the top of Henry's downy head. She tried to wipe them off. The monitor continued to wail, but Michael forced himself to ignore it. He also ignored the pounding siren that had returned to pulse in his head. "Sweetheart, listen to me. I'll tell you everything, I'll tell you later, but right now, you have him, alright? You have him, and I have you, and _that_ —" he nodded toward the tube in her arm '' — is my fault, not yours. Because you were dying, Sara." He knew this now, what everyone else had known. What he, too, had known in some part of his brain where the roar hadn't quite reached. She looked up at him, confusion and surprise on her face. He could feel her pulse — still too weak — under his fingertips cradling her jaw. "You would have died, but now I have you, and Mike has you, and Henry has you, and I regret nothing."

The nurse tried to return to take another blood pressure reading, but Michael stopped her with a look. "She's fine," he said. He looked steadily at Sara. "She's going to be fine."

* * *

When Sara awoke a second time, it was to afternoon sunlight slanting across the floor to land at the foot of her bed. She blinked, taking stock while lying very still. She remembered the pain of trying to move from earlier this morning. Actually, she noted, that pain was still very present, but if she stayed still, it was just a low, dull ache. From her vantage point on the pillow, her field of vision included the window, the plastic pitcher of water that seemed to be in every hospital room, the world over, and Michael's prone form on the stiff vinyl couch that passed for a visitor's bed. He slept deeply, though she wondered how he managed it, his head at an awkward angle on the overly hard cushion, his legs hanging off the end of the day bed. He must be very tired, she thought with a pang.

She lifted her hands, just enough to note that the needles and tubes in her arm earlier were still there. She tried to crane her neck to see the dosage on the drip bags that must be somewhere above her head, but couldn't quite manage it without sitting up, which she was not willing to do. She tried instead to take inventory of what she knew: she'd had an emergency C-Section…what, two days ago? 48 hours, at least. That explained the narcotics for pain, probably an antibiotic, standard after surgery, but she counted at least four IV lines snaking away from her hands. One had HEM taped to the tube. Hemobate? Why? She pressed the silent call button for the duty nurse. She wanted Henry, and she wanted answers, in that order.

The same women who'd been there when she'd woken earlier stepped through the room and smiled at her. Her hospital ID said Jeannie. Sara liked her…she reminded her of Katie: kind, but matter-of-fact. "How are you feeling, honey?" She whispered her question for Michael's benefit.

"Can I see my son?" She tried to look past the nurse toward the hallway. The nursery couldn't be far.

"Of course. It'll take just a few minutes to bring him up." She paged someone using the intercom on the wall.

"Bring him up?"

Jeannie poured Sara a glass of water and lifted her head up slowly so she could drink it, then eased her into a sitting position. "You're in ICU unit," she told Sara quietly. "He's in maternity ward, but we'll straighten it out."

She shouldn't be in ICU after a C-Section. She should be in maternity ward, with her baby. Sara glanced at the clipboard on the door. "Can you hand me my chart, please?" The nurse hesitated, which irritated Sara. " _My_ chart," she emphasized. She had every right to it.

Jeannie retrieved the chart reluctantly. She said, "You're an internist, right?" At Sara's nod, she placed the clipboard in her hands slowly, saying, "Sometimes it's easier on the patients who don't understand everything they're reading, you know?"

Sara opened the cover of the chart. The first page was mostly medical history, forms she'd filled out for Dr. Coleson months ago. "I know."

She read through the chart while she waited for Henry to arrive in his bassinet, and the further she got into the material, the more readily she forgave Jeannie for trying to withhold it. Apparently, a lot had happened since Tuesday night.

The nurse hovered by her elbow, clearly nervous to field the questions Sara was already shooting her way. "Really, you should wait to talk to your doctor," she tried, but Sara waved this suggestion away.

"We both know it's the RN staff that runs this unit," she acknowledged.

"Well, I _have_ been lead on this floor the whole time you've been here," Jeannie conceded, offering another shy smile.

Sara did her best to refocus on the chart. She still felt lightheaded, and sometimes, the words swam on the page. When she got to the emergency release with Michael's scribbled signature, she sighed. "Why the rush on the C-Section?" she asked, flipping back somewhat clumsily to try to piece the timeline together. She had no memory of discussing it, and apparently, Michael had been the one to agree to it. Jeannie pointed to another scribble, in Coleson's near illegible handwriting. _Acute APH._ "Hemorrhaging?" Sara clarified. "Antepartum?" Postpartum was much more common.

The nurse just nodded. "Okay," Sara said, continuing on. "So then the surgery, then..oh." The words _barbiturate-induced coma_ leaped out at her. She looked up at Jeannie's face sharply. "Why?"

The nurse shook her head. "The bleeding just wouldn't stop after surgery, honey."

Sara leaned her head back on her pillow, suddenly tired again. "Oh," she said again. She thought about how long she'd been unconscious. "Did they try to bring me out of it before today?"

"They tried," the nurse conceded.

Sara turned her head to look at the sleeping form of her husband. _Oh, Michael. I'm sorry._ Jeannie followed her gaze, and smiled a bit sadly. "I had started to think he planned to go indefinitely without sleep."

Sara swallowed. What had Jeannie just remembered, to bring such sympathy to her eyes? "Did he see me hemorrhage?" she asked softly.

Jeannie hesitated again, visibly unsure what she should share. "He did," she said slowly. "He was in the room, but…he was out of his mind, really. With worry, I mean. I'm not sure how much he actually saw." She turned away to tidy the table, like she knew she'd just overstepped.

Focusing on the nurse was easier on Sara's heart than imagining exactly what these past few days had done to Michael. If their roles had been reversed…she thought of those awful moments during his brain surgery, how desperate and frantic she'd felt, and shuddered. But then another thought occurred to her that chased away her guilt and replaced it with horror. "I'd been placed back under the induced coma more than once?" she clarified. Jeannie nodded. "Then is there…? Did they have to draw up a…?" Then she found it, tucked in the back of the folder. The DNR.

She closed her eyes to will its existence away. When she opened them, she looked again at Michael. "He didn't know about that, honey, I don't think," Jeannie whispered. "He just kind of…shut down…at that talk."

Sara looked more closely at the standard issue 'pull the plug' order, her eye catching on Lincoln's name typed neatly below the unsigned signature field. _I'm sorry, Lincoln,_ she apologized again. He'd been prepared to do what his brother couldn't, or wouldn't, whatever it cost him. In this case, ironically, Sara felt sure it would have cost him Michael. He would never have forgiven him, had Linc done what had to be done.

Mercifully, Henry arrived, wheeled into the room by an orderly, and oh! Was this child destined to always bring some sort of magical healing balm to her soul? He simply set her adrift with happiness. She set the chart aside at the sight of him; who needed a bunch of medical mumbo-jumbo when she could hold him in her arms and study every inch of him instead? He was a miniature Michael, right down to the nose and mouth and long fingers. And his eyes…oh god, such eyes. Sara was so in love, she could scarcely breathe.

"I'll leave you to it," Jeannie said softly, a hand on Sara's arm. She looked up long enough to thank the nurse sincerely, thinking briefly again of Katie. "You want me to…" Jeannie said, nodding to the chart.

"Yes, please," Sara answered. "I don't need to read more."

* * *

"You still look tired," she said softly to Michael, when he woke a while later. What appeared to be at least a year's worth of stark fear lay etched on his face. Maybe permanently.

He looked at her long and hard, holding Henry in the bed. "Well, you look pretty damn good to me," he answered roughly.

"You're a liar," she smiled, but mostly because she didn't want to cry again all over Henry's defenseless head. When she felt reasonably sure he was safe, she added simply, "I'm so sorry, Michael." The past 48 hours had measured right up there with his grief in Sona or her final moments in Miami-Dade, she felt sure. When would they stop doing this to each other? When would the universe?

He crossed the room to her, but just before pulling her to him, he remembered himself and drew back. Sara wondered if maybe this wasn't in fact more painful than jostling her tender body: Michael reaching to hold her and then not. He contented himself to sit carefully on the edge of the bed instead, leaning over Henry to tip Sara's face to him. Very gently, he caressed her cheekbones and jaw with his fingertips, brushing her hair back from her temples, and she sighed and shivered at once. He was always so very, very good at touching her face as though this were the most intimate act of love. Then he kissed her deeply, afraid to touch any other part of her, and the postpartum tears were back, threatening to fall on Henry again.

He lifted their son from her lap before they could, holding him in the cradle of his arms as she wiped her eyes. "Can we get you anything?" Michael asked her softly, as if the baby intended to assist him. "Are you hungry? Thirsty?" She smiled again, shaking her head. There was one thing she wanted very much, but before she could ask after it, her wish was granted. The door burst open, and Mike ran through, trailed by Lincoln. The latter let out a long, hard heave of relief when he saw Sara sitting up in the bed. He crossed the room to kiss her cheek, and said under his breath, "You ever think of dying on him again, I'll have to kill you." He straightened, giving her a brash smile.

"I love you, too, Linc." She meant it, ten-fold.

Mike, however, gave Sara only a cursory wave, eyes only for the new brother he finally got to meet. He ran around the bed straight to Michael, who bent down to show him the baby. "He's so little," he cried, touching Henry's tiny hand experimentally. The baby grasped his big brother's finger, and Mike practically exploded with excitement. "I think he knows me already!"

Sara celebrated with him, even though she was pretty certain the movement had been instinctive. "Mike," she said. "Come here, baby." He bounded back around the bed to her, and she braced herself for impact, but Lincoln slowed his trajectory with a well-placed hand at the last second, so that he landed shy of her knee.

"Gentle," Michael told him somewhat sternly, looking up from Henry.

"Why?" Mike asked. "Mom's fine, right Mom?" Sara had to fight back tears again: maybe it was the out-of-whack hormones, but in this moment, she was so incredibly thankful to Michael and Lincoln, to everyone, really, for not allowing her boy to worry, not for a moment. "Well, I am pretty sore," she admitted to Mike. "Gentle would be nice."

"Did you really have surgery?" Mike asked her. "Like where they cut open your stomach and everything?"

She pulled him gingerly to her, so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and just…she didn't know exactly…drink him in. "I'll show you the scar sometime, once it's healed."

He said, _"Eww,"_ and then, "Okay!" They all laughed, Sara's chuckle ending prematurely when it set a new wave of pain in motion.

Lincoln sat on the day bed Michael had slept in, and held his arms out for Henry. When Michael settled him in his brother's lap, he rocked him gently between his knees. "Henry Charles Scofield, huh?" he said. His face, too, still looked rough around the edges, reminding Sara of the year he'd weathered one too many storms back in Panama. She had time to feel another sharp pang of guilt, which she set aside when he looked from her to Michael. "Named after Pope, I'm guessing?"

"Sara's idea," Michael said softly.

"And Westmoreland," Sara added. "Michael's idea."

Lincoln released a quick breath through his nose. "Huh," he said again. "Nicely done, you two."

Sara swallowed a lump in her throat. She had a feeling he wasn't just talking about their son's name. She caught Michael's eye, and suddenly, she really, really wanted to be alone again with her husband. The duty nurse - someone new this time - must have read her mind, because she herded everyone out about five minutes later, declaring Sara well past her social hour curfew. She kissed Mike, squeezed Lincoln's hand, then held onto Michael, who held Henry. "Don't leave just yet?" she asked.

He called to Linc that he'd catch up, to maybe stop at the hospital cafeteria for an ice cream with Mike. Their older son whooped at this development as Michael charmed the nurse with a disarming smile. He stretched out next to Sara carefully on the narrow bed, tucking an alert Henry between them. She stared down at them both, knowing without a doubt that the soft waves of euphoria she rode had nothing to do with the clear liquid released into her vein every twenty minutes. Still, she stared at the tube a little too long.

"Sara," Michael said carefully, "I'm so sorry. I fought it every way I could, until there was no other choice I could live with."

She brushed her awkwardly taped, tube-strewn hand over his head in caress, half-hoping something would catch and pull loose. No luck. But then she looked down at her hospital-issue gown where she could detect the thick padding covering her incision. It still hurt quite badly, even with pain management, were she to admit it. Which she wouldn't. "There's no other choice I can live with, either." She touched a finger to Henry's hand as Mike had done, but he didn't grasp hers. So much for an automatic response. She smiled to herself. "And now I have plenty of new material to hash over at NA meetings."

He toyed with her hair, absently tucking the loose strands behind her ear. She closed her eyes at his touch, so familiar and welcome it nearly made her weep. His voice washed over her. "You know what I was thinking last night?" he asked her.

She opened her eyes. While she'd been in a coma? While he'd had the burden of making horribly difficult decisions for her? She wasn't sure if she could hear the answer. "What?" she asked, when she'd worked up the courage. Her voice sounded brittle.

"I was thinking, we should buy a boat."

This response was so unexpected, the brittleness dissolved on a short laugh, which made her body hurt again. "What, like our boat in the warehouse we joked about escaping in?"

"Why not?"

He amazed her. "Maybe because you couldn't be sure I would be around to buy it with you, Michael?" she said gently. "I know I scared you."

He acknowledged this with a pained smile. "'Scared' doesn't really cover it." He looked like he considered saying more, then decided against it. It didn't matter; they had plenty of time to divulge the details, dispensing the scope of their feelings for one another in small doses, easier to swallow. "But then I went downstairs to hold Henry, and I just saw it, you know? Us. On that boat. I could see it clear as anything."

Sara lay back on her pillow, returning to that dock in her mind, when everything had felt so insurmountable, their chances at happiness as narrow as the threading of a needle. Escape had felt so tempting that day. Why not, as long as it's you and me? he'd said. Now, what lay ahead felt less like a precarious passage and more like a wide open horizon. Much better for sailing. Maybe you, me, and two small passengers, she amended.

Maybe it was the morphine talking, she allowed herself to think bleakly, but: "Michael Scofield, are you asking me to sail off into the sunset with you, to points unknown?"

His head turned, and he studied her with the hint of a smile touching his lips. "Why? Are you finally ready?"

She looked at him cautiously, then decided he was serious. "Absolutely."


	14. Chapter 14

Epilogue

The sloop cut through the calm water of the bay, tipping past the jetty of the harbor to turn its nose into the expanse of Lake Ontario. It was beautiful and sleek and the wheel at the helm responded with graceful precision under Michael's fingertips. He'd selected it after a careful search, making sure it met his exacting criteria: fast enough to outrun storms, agile enough to sail anywhere they decided to drop it in the water, and most importantly, large enough to sleep four.

Sara stood at the starboard rail, face to the wind, hair caught in the breeze of the mid-summer afternoon, looking for all the world as a woman should look who is finally safe and fulfilled and free.

She turned at the voice of their firstborn son, who laughed over the wind, "I don't think it's fair Henry has to learn to walk on the deck of the _Taj!_ " He stood bent behind his eleven-month-old brother, legs braced on the smooth planking, ready to catch him should he fall. Henry had both Mike's hands grasped tightly in his chubby fists as he experimented with his first careful steps toward his mother.

"Really, really great babies need an extra challenge or two," Michael called to him, but he shifted his gaze from the horizon to train one eye on his sons. Even really great eight-year-olds needed supervision near boat rails and open water.

"Let him try again when we anchor tonight," Sara laughed, watching Henry careen from side to side, saved repeatedly by Mike's grip. She scooped him up after he'd made the staggering journey to her, freeing Mike to join Michael.

"Can I take the wheel?" he asked, already reaching, his eye on the nav screen.

"Watch the boom," Michael said automatically, pointing to the bar of the sail overhead, and Mike said, "I know, Dad. You already taught me that."

He stepped back, allowing his son to take over in front of him, both hands ready to regain control if needed. He smiled to himself; his stance mirrored Mike's from just a moment before, hovering carefully over his brother, ensuring he stayed on his feet. He decided he wouldn't point this out to Mike, proudly captaining the sloop.

"Are we staying out all week, Dad?" he asked, glancing at the screen, where GPS coordinates mapped their projected route.

"If we want to," he answered. He'd cleared his schedule, summer break was upon Mike, and Sara had reduced her hours at the clinic. Time was at their disposal.

"And maybe sometime, we can sail even longer? Farther?" Mike loved the boat.

Michael smiled down at the glossy crown of his head, ruddy in the light of the sun. "One day, sure."

Sara and Henry had settled near the pulpit, where droplets of water danced up to splash Henry's bare toes, who belly-laughed in delight. The bow dipped gently as they cut through the water like a knife through butter. "You watch out for the boom, too," he called to her, as she fought to keep their baby's sun hat secured on his head.

"We're all watching the boom, Michael," she chastised good-naturedly, and he smiled at her back, squinting at the light off the water.

He still worried about her sometimes, though he knew it was without cause, and he'd learned to stop saying so. Sara's recovery had been slower than she'd had patience for, her frustration evident when she couldn't pick up Henry on her own, or got tired too quickly. _You shouldn't have to do this on your own,_ she'd said so often to Michael in those early weeks, and in her eyes, he'd seen the ghost of remembered pain, raising Mike without him. He knew she had no interest in evening the score.

But in caring for Henry while Sara recovered, Michael had been given a gift. Instead of wading cautiously into the waters of fatherhood as he'd been required to do with Mike, with Henry, he'd had to dive. Very early on, he'd come to know precisely what Sara meant when she'd warned him it could be hard, very hard, caring for an infant day and night. But he'd come out on the other side fully indoctrinated into parenthood, knowing with confidence that he could change a diaper while giving a spelling test, and juggle car keys and a car seat and the carpool. He knew the moods and needs and delights of his second-born like the back of his own hand, and when he let it, the sight of his toothy smile appearing in the rear-view mirror or over the rail of his crib or the lip of his high chair tray could bring Michael to tears.

He laid his hands over Mike's as he guided the rudder, not because he needed his help, but just because he wanted to. Mike craned his head back to look at him, anticipating instruction from Michael's lips. "I love you, Mike," he told him instead, into his ear, over the wind, because he said this every chance he got, to all of them. Mike leaned back into him to butt his head into Michael's chest playfully, smiling at him upside-down. "I know that, too, Dad," he laughed. "We all do."


End file.
